Roman de la Rivality
by Anysia
Summary: Poetry isn't something you can parse into its composite elements. When a horrified Jimmy finds himself staring down an A-minus in AP English, he has to find a way to understand beauty and courtly love outside the confines of his chemistry notebook — and he may have to ask the last person on earth he'd have chosen for help. J/C. Complete.
1. A Minus State of Mind

_**A/N:**__ There's some English major concentrating in medieval literature who's going to be laughing so hard at the title and various references, I swear. _

_Ahem. So, this fic is a product of a few things: a) Jimmy is not particularly good at English (see: "Return of the Nanobots"), b) Cindy __**is **__good at English, c) as a former TA, I'm familiar with the lengths certain types of students will go to in order to get a perfect grade, and d) I was that medieval-concentrating English major for a good part of my undergrad years.  
_

_I'm estimating this fic at four chapters of decent length, maybe five/six at the outside — I've already got it fully outlined, and I'm about halfway through the drafting process (there won't be anything to justify the rating for a few more chapters, but it'll be there). Like I said in the notes to my previous one-shots, I'm still learning the ropes of the JN fandom, and it's been eons since I've written a multichaptered fic, so any and all feedback would be wonderful. _

_Now, on with the show! …or as Geoffrey Chaucer would say, "heere begynneth the tale of James and she yclept Kynthía, fulle of rivylitee, angre, and secrette affeccioun." _

* * *

**Roman de la Rivality**

**Chapter One: "A Minus State of Mind"**

* * *

"_Very well-written and well-researched, but also a bit formulaic and creatively unremarkable. Dig deeper next time." _

Jimmy closed his eyes. Opened them. Closed them again. Opened them again. The words remained, indelible on the page.

_Well-written _and _well-researched_… well, he'd written the essay, so those were kind of a given. _Formulaic _he could almost, with some mental acrobatics (the only kind at which he excelled, truth be told), twist into a compliment — formulae were his life's blood, after all, the logical spine of his experiments and inventions — but if there was one thing James Isaac Neutron was _not_, it was _unremarkable_**.** Even in English class, which was, if he could possibly have such a thing, his worst subject.

But _unremarkable _was not the current cause of the insistent throbbing at his temple.

No, _that_ he could attribute to the unfamiliar mark beside the A, _his _A, one of his oldest and dearest friends. _Well hi there, A, lovely to see you again. Lookin' great there, ol' buddy. Oh no, don't worry, you've got plenty of friends at home._

His As were beautiful, unblemished works of art. Loving tributes to the letter. Excellent in every way, shape, and form.

They did _not _come with a hideous, mocking dash beside them.

"An A… _minus_?" Jimmy whispered to himself, voice strangled with horror and disbelief.

It would have been unbearable enough all on its own. It would have been enough of an irreversible blemish on his previously perfect academic record just by _existing_… if only Ms. Birch hadn't still been distributing papers to the rest of his classmates in AP English III, permitting just enough downtime before the day's lesson for Cindy to raise an inquisitive eyebrow at his horrified expression and lean slightly over her desk, craning her neck to catch a glimpse of his paper.

Jimmy clutched it jealously to his chest and shot her a dark look, but the slowly-spreading grin across her pert features told him that she had seen all she needed to see. As did the way she wordlessly slid her paper across her desk so he could clearly see the bright-red "A" written across the top. There were comments written next to it in Ms. Birch's clean, flowing hand, but they didn't matter. Nothing did except the slow build of anger and humiliation rising within him.

_Just say it, Vortex_, he thought venomously. _You know you want to, and you've probably got the time. Just. Say it. __**Well, well, well, what have we here, NERDTRON? Is it actually possible that The Great One has (gasp) NOT gotten the highest grade on an assignment? Is that giant freak brain of yours finally shorting out? I guess it's aaaallll downhill from here, Neutron, hope you enjoy going to a state school! **_

He narrowed his eyes at her, a series of witty comebacks to her imagined retorts just waiting to spring from his tongue… but she didn't even give him the satisfaction of spirited verbal warfare. She just settled back into her seat with an impossibly self-satisfied smirk tilting at the corners of her lips, one hand resting lightly on her paper.

There had to be a mistake. That was all there was to it. All right, Cindy got an A — big deal. She was (he was forced to admit) very intelligent, and arguably more well-rounded in her (steady, boy, you can do this) academic pursuits, excelling in both the humanities and sciences. She got As all the time. They weren't as good as _his _As, of course, not as astounding, but still. Cindy was perfectly capable of earning an A on an essay assignment.

But there was no way in heaven, hell, or Euclidean geometry that _she _could get an A if he _didn't_.

_Just you wait, Vortex_, Jimmy thought. _When this gets straightened out—_

"All right, does everyone have their papers back?" Ms. Birch's voice interrupted his thoughts. Hearing no protest from the class, she said, "Good. Now, if any of you have any questions about your grades, feel free to see me after class to—"

Jimmy's hand shot up in the front row, his eyes narrowed accusingly at Cindy.

"_After class_, James," Ms. Birch said firmly.

"But Ms. Birch—!"

Her pointed look clearly brooked no argument, and he slumped down in his seat, defeated.

"Okay then. Now I'm sure you've all had your fill of courtly love by now, but we're going to spend just a few more days studying medieval poetry. If you'll all pull out the packet from yesterday's class on troubadours, we can…"

Only half-listening, Jimmy numbly flipped open his notebook and retrieved the neatly-stapled packet from the portfolio pocket in front.

_This is gonna be a long day_.

* * *

Jimmy's notes were little more than an assortment of terse phrases written in a heavy hand when the period bell finally sounded at 11:15.

"All right, now don't forget, tonight you're going to be reading the selection from The Wife of Bath's Tale in your textbook — I know the modern English translation is on the opposite page, but try to get through the Middle English first, okay? It might surprise you. See you all tomorrow."

The familiar sounds of shuffling notebooks and idle chatter surrounded him as his classmates began to file out of the room, but Jimmy remained rooted to his desk, staring purposefully ahead at Ms. Birch as she began to wipe down the board.

"Something troubling you, James?" Ms. Birch asked without turning around.

"I… was hoping I could discuss my grade on our latest term paper."

"Mm-hm."

"You're an excellent teacher, Ms. Birch, so please don't take this as a criticism of your job performance—"

"Oh, I'm sure I won't," she said mildly, setting down the eraser and sitting on the edge of her desk at the front of the classroom.

"—but you seem to have made a slight error with my grade," Jimmy said, grinding his teeth a bit as he rose from his desk and stood before her.

"I'll double-check my gradebook — would you hand that up here, please, James?"

Jimmy extracted the paper from his notebook and eyed her expectantly as she peered at the grade and her comments over her square-framed glasses, then glanced at her gradebook. Back. And forth.

As the seconds passed, he somehow knew that the chances of her exclaiming that _of course _she'd made a mistake, everyone knew Jimmy Neutron _never _got anything less than an A on an assignment were becoming increasingly remote.

"Hmm… nope, no mistake. It was a very well-written essay on the idealization of courtly love and beauty. You clearly did a great deal of research. Good work, James."

_Good work. _Not _absolutely breathtaking, James!_ Or _a testament to the potential beauty and eloquence of the English language, Mr. Neutron!_ Just… _good work_?

Attempting to regulate his breathing, he carefully said, "Thank you, Ms. Birch. I appreciate that. But…" He swallowed with some difficulty. "…an _A-minus_, ma'am?"

"That's right."

"And… you say there was no mistake?"

"I'm afraid not, no," Ms. Birch said blandly, handing his paper back to him.

And maybe it was her calm, even tone. Maybe it was the memory of Cindy's impossibly self-satisfied grin. Or maybe he was just really, really tired of seeing that goddamn mocking dash beside his perfect A.

But that was the moment where Jimmy lost it.

"That can't be!" he yelled, tossing his notebook back onto his desk. "You said it yourself! It was well-written, it was well-researched, it was 'good work,' remember? How does that fail to merit an A?!"

"James," Ms. Birch said, "I've had you in my class for several months now. I know your reputation in this town and this school district. We all do. And I know you're accustomed to perfection in yourself and your schoolwork. But to get an A in my class, you have to demonstrate more than perfection."

Jimmy stared at her for a long moment. "…Ms. Birch," he began slowly, "you'll forgive me for being pedantic, but as a teacher who _specializes _in the proper usage of the English language, surely you understand that surpassing perfection is by definition—"

"_James_," Ms. Birch sighed. "Look. I know English isn't your best subject." She held up a hand at his sputtering protest. "And I know that you'd rather be devoting your time and energy to Mr. MacCulley's AP Physics class. But the fact is, you _elected_ to take Advanced Placement English, and in a class that can count for college credit, I try to teach my students as though they _are_ receiving college credit."

"I appreciate your level of respect, ma'am, but—"

"It's easy to write a straightforward term paper, James," Ms. Birch continued as if he hadn't spoken. "And you're right — there are rules. Your essay was well-written and well-researched. Not a single syntax error in sight, perfect structure, perfect citations. But this was a _creative _assignment — the idea was to get you thinking _beyond _research and poetic meter and historical context. I wanted to see you interact with the text on a more personal level — what it means to you, what emotions it stirs, what parallels you can see between it and modern life. It's not enough to just interpret what it says — I wanted to see you explore what it _does_."

Ms. Birch smiled at him, just a bit sympathetically. "You did a very good job with your paper, James. And it certainly was interesting. But you didn't reach that extra level. And that's why you lost points."

She stood from her desk and smoothed a stray wrinkle from her crisp pencil skirt. "If it makes you feel any better, I'm not sure the rest of the class understood the assignment entirely, either. There was only one A out of the sixteen of you."

It probably would have made him feel a _little_ better, he silently admitted to himself as Ms. Birch began to straighten her papers and pack up her things… if it had been absolutely anyone else in the class. If it'd been Oleander, or Nissa, or Stacy, or anyone that he could just write off as a vague fluke, just a lucky assignment, maybe even Ms. Birch staying out a little too late the night before grading (well, maybe not that, he amended, observing her wiry, greying hair and the crisp lines of her skirt and blouse). But if it had been anyone, _anyone _other than Cindy… maybe the rest of the class failing to perform to expectations as well would grant him some small measure of schadenfreude.

But it _was _Cindy.

So all bets were off.

"Ms. Birch, I have to say that I completely fail to see the merit of utilizing a creative assignment option," Jimmy said. Ms. Birch looked up at him sharply, one eyebrow quirked, and even though a little voice in his head was telling him very pointedly to stand down, he continued. "Any class such as this designed to be a survey of literature surely benefits more from a hermeneutic pedagogical approach than any kind of emotion-based reaction to the text!"

"And when you've obtained _your _doctorate in education, James," Ms. Birch said, eyeing him over her glasses, "I'll be more than happy to discuss pedagogical theory with you." She snapped her briefcase closed with a meaningful 'click' and set it down in the desk in front of her, effectively ending the discussion.

"Oh, a doctorate in the humanities," Jimmy scoffed as he shuffled irritably back to his desk and collected his books. "Let me get back to you in two weeks. Then I'll just grade my own damn papers. At least _I'll _know an A when I see one."

"Mm. One last thing before you go, James."

"Yes, Ms. Birch?"

She slid a sheet of paper to the front of her desk and eyed him neutrally.

Jimmy's eyes widened as he saw the words in bold typeface across the top margin. "Detention?" he said in disbelief. "For… disrespecting faculty?"

Ms. Birch handed him her pen with a pointed look.

"Sign here."

* * *

_Pretty sure this is the worst day I've had since the toilet in a briefcase malfunctioned_, Jimmy thought sullenly as the thumbprint scanner on his locker confirmed his identity.

"Lovely weather we're having, isn't it, Neutron?" a syrupy-sweet female voice called.

…_yep, I think that pretty much clinches it_. "What do you want, Vortex?" he ground out, pulling his locker open with a fraction more force than necessary as Cindy appeared beside him, the portrait of innocent contentment.

"Oh, well," she began, leaning up against the locker next to his, her green eyes fairly shining with excitement, "I just had a few questions about our term paper in Ms. Birch's class. Do you mind if I look at yours for a minute?"

"Knock it off, Vortex. I'm not in the mood."

"It was the weirdest thing — when we were in class I caught a glimpse of your paper and I _thought _I saw some kind of smudge next to your A, almost like a _minus _or something and I thought, Wow, that can't be right…"

"Vortex. Seriously."

"And, you know, I was waiting outside the classroom for a little while after class, you know, just hanging around, and I _thought _I heard Ms. Birch say that only one student in class got an A on the assignment. And I kept thinking, well, I know _I _got an A, so that's one…"

"I'm warning you, Cindy…"

"And I thought, oh no, that _must _have been what I saw, and this couldn't possibly be the end of James Isaac Neutron, the Enshrined Boy Genius, could it?" Cindy asked in mock horror, placing a hand to her chest. "Such a dark day in the history of Retroville! How will we _ever_—"

Jimmy threw his books into his locker with a resounding metallic thud. Several nearby students turned to stare at him, but when they noticed the slender blonde girl beside him, collectively rolled their eyes in understanding and turned away.

"All right," he said, retrieving his calculus textbook from the top shelf and shoving it into his backpack. "All right. You want me to get down on my knees and proclaim your everlasting superiority, Vortex? Want me to pretend like suddenly you're the smartest kid in town again?"

"Well, if we really want to be accurate, _today_…" she smiled at him and shrugged a fraction too innocently.

"Yeah. Right." Jimmy zipped up his backpack with a violent jerk and slammed his locker door shut. "Fine, Vortex," he said. "Fine. You got an A. I didn't. You're the paragon of intellect at Retroville High. Because you got _one _A on _one _term paper. Ignore all the times I've beaten you. Ignore every single time I've smoked you in science fairs and essay contests and every single goddamn academic competition we've ever both entered."

At seventeen, he'd gained some length and sinew in his bone structure — not enough to be daunting or impressive, but enough that he could bore down into Cindy's furious eyes with his own as he moved to stand within a few inches of her. "Congratulations, Vortex," he said, offering her a humorless smile. "You must be so proud. You beat me. Once. In _seven years_."

Cindy stared up at him, expression unreadable. After a long moment, she shifted her books to one arm and took a step away from him.

"Really sucks being second-best, doesn't it, Neutron?" she said flatly. Her eyes burned into his for a long moment before she turned and walked away, her shoulders tense.

Jimmy watched her go, his backpack slung awkwardly over one shoulder and a deep, gnawing feeling of discomfort beginning to grow within him that he wasn't entirely sure he could attribute to the events of Ms. Birch's class.

* * *

_Fifteen minutes_, Jimmy thought, stretching his legs and eyeing the analog clock above the doorframe. Despite the obvious black mark on his record, he'd been rather pleased to discover that detention hadn't been an endless academic horror so much as a brief spell of uninterrupted tedium.

"You're a new face here, aren't you?" the small-framed detention monitor — he was one of the remedial teachers, Mr. Maltesta or something like that — had said in a kind voice when Jimmy had shown up at room 238, looking for all the world like a man condemned. "Just need you to sign the attendance sheet for me. Have to keep track of everyone, you know."

Jimmy had looked at him, then around the empty classroom, before sighing and reaching to take the battered clipboard from the smiling man. "How long do I have to stay here?" he had asked wearily as he signed his name in his familiar messy scrawl.

"Just until 4:30. You can do your homework if you like. Just no talking to the other students."

Again eyeing the abundance of empty desks around him, Jimmy had flatly stated, "…I think I can manage that," before thumping his backpack down beside a desk in the front row and slouching into the seat.

Two hours now. Only fifteen minutes left. At least he hadn't been forced to spend the time with any of the underachieving slackers that pelted him with rubber bands (and, on one particularly unpleasant occasion, thumbtacks) at every single school assembly.

Jimmy rolled his neck, attempting to work out the lingering stiffness, before glancing at his watch, then at the empty desk at the front of the classroom. Mr. Maltesta had told him he was going to the bathroom and then down to the main office to make copies, but to keep an eye on everyone else for him while he was gone. Ha, ha.

Fifteen minutes really wasn't _too _unreasonable a time to cut out, he thought, leaning forward and slowly placing the rough schematic he'd been drafting into his backpack. Not if no one was watching, anyway…

"Wow, Neutron, trapped in the shame room, too?" a female voice called from the hallway. "Guess when the mighty start to fall they just hit escape velocity right out of the gate."

"Intellect in no way correlates to the terminal velocity of the human body, Vortex," Jimmy said flatly, zipping up his backpack and lifting his head to look at Cindy as she came to stand in the classroom doorway. Her damp hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail, and she was clad in a simple pair of shorts and a well-worn T-shirt. On her way home from track practice, no doubt — ever since entering Retroville High, Cindy'd made a name for herself as a sprinter on the varsity track team, in addition to karate, and the honor society, and her position as class secretary, and, well, anything else she could fit into her schedule.

Although, if Jimmy were pressed, under absolute, screaming torture, he'd admit that he liked her best in her track uniform. The loudmouthed girl he'd argued with over the years had somehow slowly transformed into a rather striking young woman, and there was something very… appealing to watching her lithe frame stretching as she warmed up by the track, all shapely calves and curving shoulders and…

"Something wrong with your eyes, Neutron?" Cindy asked, raising an eyebrow and leaning against the doorframe.

"Sorry," Jimmy mumbled, dropping his attention back to his backpack. "It's… just been kind of a bad day."

"Yeah, I got that when you decided to act like a complete jackass earlier," she said frankly, crossing the room to sit at the desk beside him. "Also the fact that you mouthed off enough to Ms. Birch to end up here."

"How'd you know Ms. Birch was the one who gave me detention?"

"I told you, I was listening after class. You really _are _slipping, aren't you, brainiac?" She smirked and leaned back in her seat. "Ah, it's gonna be nice being the town genius again. Think I can get them to retroactively add my name to all of those stupid banners and trophies of yours back at Lindbergh? I mean, you _did _almost destroy the town, like, a hundred times, you'd think that'd count for _something_…"

"Oh yeah," Jimmy rolled his eyes. "Like more than my getting highest test scores in the history of the state or the fact that I curved the entire _school_'s ranking high enough to get us listed as one of the best in the country or all of the extra funding my inventions brought in to the science departmentor the fact that I _saved _the town, like, a hundred times…"

"Yeah, yeah, everyone in the world knows about your accomplishments, you're _so _amazing for being a complete idiot," Cindy said, stretching her arms above her head. "Look, I'm not here for a social call, and definitely not with _you_, freak-brain."

"Always the charmer, aren't you, Vortex."

"Oh, like _you're _one to talk." She sighed and tapped the heels of her well-worn sneakers against the linoleum floor. "Look. I was talking to Stacy after school and she said Ms. Birch is letting her turn in some revisions for a higher grade. I know she got a B and you got an A-minus…" She smiled at his pained grimace. "…but if you sweet-talk Ms. Birch, maybe she'll let you try to up your grade, too."

"It should have been an A in the first place," Jimmy sighed, setting his backpack at his feet. "She even said it was well-written and well-researched, and I _know _I delved into the various thematic elements of the text. It doesn't make any sense." He ran a hand through his thick brown hair. "It's just… completely illogical. In science, it's easy — there's one right answer, no shades for interpretation. The gravitational constant is always G, the atomic number of radium is always 88, and the measurement of a mole always corresponds to the Avogadro constant. There's no… 'transcendent level' or 'personal connection' or whatever the hell kind of enlightenment Ms. Birch thinks I'm supposed to get."

"That's what makes English fun for the rest of us, Neutron," Cindy said with a small smile. "There's no _one _right answer. You can interpret and analyze and come to a thousand different conclusions, so _you're _not always the only one who's right." Her smile grew wider. "Plus, it's always fun to see you actually suck at something for once."

"An A-minus equates to 'sucking' now, Vortex?" Saying the grade out loud left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he grimaced.

Cindy laughed in response. "You're so predictable, Neutron," she said, turning in her seat and propping her feet up against his chair. "Guess you'll just have to get used to being fallible and mortal like the rest of us."

"Yeah, you have fun with that, Cindy. I'm talking to Ms. Birch about a revised grade first thing tomorrow morning."

"Yeah, I figure I might try that, too. I don't know if they're _technically _allowed to give out A-pluses, but it might be worth the extra effort…"

Jimmy stood and slammed his backpack onto his chair, narrowly missing Cindy's toes. "Don't you ever stop talking?"

Cindy stood and glared at him, her teasing smile gone. "Like you wouldn't be doing the exact same thing if our positions were reversed, Nerdtron," she bit out.

"Newsflash, Vortex, our positions have been reversed _a hundred times_, but one A isn't some kind of miraculous event to me like it _apparently _is to you!"

"It sure as hell is when _you're _not the one who gets it!"

"I wouldn't get too comfortable in your sad little genius fantasy world, Vortex," Jimmy said, glaring down at her, "because my paper's going to make yours look like an unedited submission to a non-peer-reviewed journal."

Cindy gasped and stared at him.

Jimmy slung his backpack over his shoulder and brought his face close to hers. "From a _nonaccredited institution_," he whispered.

"You son of a _bitch_!" Cindy yelled, pressing her palms hard against his chest. "Well _good luck, _Neutron, because remember, you're writing about _people_, and more importantly, _courtly love _and _women, _something we both know you don't have the slightest clue about!"

"Well if even a fraction of them are like you, can you _blame _me?"

"I can blame you for anything!"

"I know, and you usually do!"

"That's because _you're an idiot_!"

Jimmy and Cindy stared at each other, eyes burning, hearts pounding, inches apart, the air between them crackling with angry tension.

"You know," Cindy started, poking him hard in the chest with one finger, "despite you having the interpersonal skills of a _neurally-impaired__** monkey **_and insulting me just because your precious ego took a few hits today, I came here to offer you my notes just in case you wanted to revise your paper, but now you can just do it yourself!"

"Fine!" Jimmy yelled back, grasping her finger and tossing her hand aside. "I will!"

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

With one last pointed glare, Cindy turned on her heel and stormed from the room, her fists clenched at her sides as she passed a bewildered Mr. Maltesta, his arms laden with copies.

The teacher shook his head. "I swear," he sighed, "this always happens whenever there are so many of you teenagers in one place."

* * *

**CONTINUED IN CHAPTER TWO: "A PARLIAMENT OF FOOLS" **


	2. A Parliament of Fools

_**A/N:**__ Thanks so much for all of the amazing feedback, everyone! I know a lot of the references can be a little strange and esoteric, so you guys are completely awesome for sticking with me through 'em. This one should be a little more accessible… if you don't count Jimmy's tendency to slip into indecipherable techno-jargon. The Chaucer poem that Jimmy refers to is 'The Parliament of Fowls,' hence the chapter title._

_Warning: this chapter is rated W for Wacky Hijinks. There is also a slight amount of punny wordplay. It's all Sheen's fault. _

* * *

**Roman de la Rivality**

**Chapter Two: "A Parliament of Fools"**

* * *

"You have to understand, gentlemen," Jimmy said, gritting his teeth. "Failure is not an option with this one."

It was the day after Jimmy's waking academic nightmare, and, never one to do anything in half-measure, he'd thrown himself wholeheartedly into his attempts to better his English grade. His normally-pristine lab was in a stark state of mechanical disarray, with discarded parts, metallic scraps, and the odd bundle of wires covering every available surface (including Carl).

"I don't understand, Jim," Carl said awkwardly, struggling to extract himself from a tangle of wires. "I mean… I know that you're a genius and all, but I'd be pretty happy with an A-minus. Especially if I had to write about pet rock sonnets."

"That's _Petrarchan_, Carl," Jimmy sighed from his workbench, tightening a screw into the small device in front of him.

"Yeah, Carl," Sheen said, "but Cindy got an A on _her _pet rock and you know Jimmy can't let her win." He experimentally touched the wire in his hand to a nearby scrap of metal and giggled maniacally at the small resulting spark.

"Let me guess," Jimmy said, rolling his eyes beneath his protective goggles. "Libby told you."

"Yeah, she called to reschedule our study date for tonight. Said she and Cindy have to go shopping for frames or something."

"I didn't know Cindy wore glasses," Carl said.

"She said something about frames for her paper. Maybe they're reading glasses?"

"I've never seen Cindy read with glasses, either."

"How often have you seen her read?"

"_Guys_," Jimmy sighed. _Einstein knows they're great friends, but sometimes…_

"Sorry, Jim," Carl said, rubbing the back of his neck. "What is it you're working on, anyway?"

"Not working on," Jimmy said, making one last small adjustment, removing his goggles, and triumphantly holding up the device. "_Finished_."

It was a small, handheld metallic box, with a tiny speaker and several adjustment knobs. "Gentlemen," Jimmy began, his voice full of the familiar demonstrative pride that always preluded the presentation of a new invention, "I give you the Squawkbox 4000, a synthetic ornithological translation device." He beamed proudly. "Any questions?"

Sheen and Carl stared at him for a long moment.

"…why is it the 4000?" Carl asked.

Jimmy looked at Carl, then at the device. "…I have no idea," he said finally. "It just makes it sound more scientific."

"And what was the… orthodontist… whatever you said?" Sheen asked.

Jimmy sighed. "_Ornithological translation device_," he repeated. "Basically, it inputs the communication of birds, analyzes the frequency, and renders it into human speech."

"…um, it's a real cool invention, Jim, but… how does that help you with your project?"

"Very simple, Carl," Jimmy said knowledgeably. He held up the device for their inspection. "As you know, we are currently studying the concept of medieval love in English class. One of the preeminent medieval authors, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote a well-known poem in which he described the commonly-held medieval view that birds selected their mates on Valentine's Day." He glanced at the digital calendar display on his computer's screen. "I know it's only the tenth, but you have to figure even birds probably don't wait until the last minute to find a date. We'll simply ask several members of species specifically mentioned in Chaucer's poem and extrapolate their responses to the deeper understanding of… love or romance or whatever it is Ms. Birch wants me to get, et voila! I submit my revisions and have my perfect record restored by tomorrow afternoon."

"…you really think that'll work?" Carl asked.

"Of course it will," Jimmy said confidently. "What could possibly go wrong?"

* * *

It was unseasonably warm for an early February afternoon, and the park was alive with the playful shouts of the town's residents as they enjoyed a brief respite from winter. Fortunately, the abundance of potentially food-giving humans seemed to have drawn in various species of birds rather than frightened them off, so Jimmy had a wide variety of subjects at his disposal when he, Carl, and Sheen arrived.

"I suppose we could start with the waterfowl," Jimmy said, eyeing a small group of ducks bathing at the edge of the tiny pond at the park's center. "Chaucer mentions a number of them explicitly. They should be able to help." He made his way over to the pond, carefully adjusting one of the knobs on the Squawkbox in his hand.

The ducks were a bit standoffish but seemed rather curious as Jimmy slowly approached them. "Let's see," he muttered, adjusting the Squawkbox's frequency, "hawk… sparrow… pigeon… ah! Duck. There we go."

He cleared his throat and held out the device. "Greetings, gentle waterfowl!" he called. "The feast of Saint Valentine will soon be upon us, and I know it is time for you to select your mates!"

Carl and Sheen remained a short distance away, exchanging a glance.

"Uh, Sheen?" Carl said carefully. "Do you remember Jimmy's plans always being quite this… stupid?"

A sleek-feathered mallard slowly waddled up to Jimmy and stared up at him expectantly as he knelt down to approach it. "Ah yes, you," he said amiably. "Perhaps you can tell me about the various qualities you're seeking in a mate." He held out the device.

"Bread?" the mallard quacked hopefully.

"…bread?" Jimmy repeated.

"Bread!" the mallard quacked in excitement. It turned and called over to the ducks at the pond's edge. "Bread!"

They all looked at the mallard, then at Jimmy. "Bread!" they quacked, chorus-like.

"Uh…" Jimmy began awkwardly, "…I think you're missing the point of the exercise, little guy. Now, according to Chaucer…"

"Bread," the mallard quacked, a bit more insistently.

"…you're, uh, supposed to be selecting a mate…"

"_Bread_."

"…so you can celebrate your love on the feast of…"

"_Bread!" _

Jimmy tossed the Squawkbox to the ground in abject frustration. "Oh, for the love of— I don't have any bread, all right? Now would you please listen!?"

The mallard's insistent quacks for bread suddenly stopped, and it appeared for all the world to narrow its beady eyes to angry slits. Jimmy felt a sudden, inexplicable chill run down his spine.

"Bread," the mallard called in a low quack.

The other ducks began to waddle purposefully towards Jimmy. "_Bread_," they intoned together.

"I, uh, see that I caught you at a bad time," Jimmy said awkwardly, slowly reaching down to retrieve the Squawkbox. "Totally my fault, no harm done."

"Bread," they quacked in response. "Bread. _Bread_."

"Uh, Carl? Sheen?" Jimmy said in a tremulous voice, backing up slowly.

"I dunno, Sheen, what about that time he caused the second Ice Age?" Carl said, brow furrowed in thought.

"_Guys_," Jimmy called, a bit desperately.

"That wasn't half as stupid as the time we ended up going clear across the ocean for salt water taffy," Sheen said with a dismissive wave.

"_Guys!" _

"You say something, Jim?" Carl asked.

"_Run!" _Jimmy yelled as he rushed past them, a flock of angrily-quacking ducks in hot pursuit as he ran towards his hovercar.

Carl and Sheen watched him go.

"…okay, that may have been the stupidest," Sheen said.

* * *

A shaky hand covered in what appeared to be angry duckbill marks slotted a key into the lock on a front door. Its owner took a few unsteady steps into the front entryway before collapsing onto the floor.

"Is that you, Jimbo?" Hugh Neutron's pleasant voice called from the living room. "Why don't you come over here and watch the latest episode of _Duck Dynasty _with me? They're featuring limited-edition mother-of-pearl duck calls!"

"…I think I've had enough ducks for today, thank you," Jimmy said emotionlessly from where he lay facedown against the hardwood.

* * *

"Now I know I encountered a few difficulties with the Squawkbox…" Jimmy began as he and Sheen leaned up against their lockers during their shared free period.

"If you call getting chased by a flock of crazed rabid ducks a few 'difficulties,'" Sheen shuddered.

"Sheen, birds can't transmit the rabies virus."

"You didn't see the look in their eyes!" he yelled, grasping Jimmy by the shoulders. "Nothing but _madness and hunger_! It was like something out of the Japan-exclusive release of _Ultralord Versus the Evil Duckpeople of Vergon Six_!"

Jimmy carefully removed Sheen's hands from his shoulders. "So despite these _difficulties_," he repeated meaningfully, "I think I've found an excellent source of data for my revised essay."

Carl was breathing heavily as he came up beside them, resting his hands on his knees. "Sorry I'm late, Jim," he wheezed, "but the home ec room is all the way at the other end of the school and I ran into Butch down by the cafeteria so I had to run around to the east wing to get around him and by the time I got there…"

"That's fine, Carl," Jimmy said. "Did you get what I needed?"

"Yeah," Carl said between breaths, handing over a small roll of tape. "What is it you're going to do with it, exactly?"

"Very simple," Jimmy said authoritatively. "One of the authors we've studied, Petrarch, was an Italian poet whose work was known for its 'ideals' — the object of his affection, Laura, had several features and dimensions from which Petrarch extrapolated an aesthetic ideal that he then applied to women in general." Jimmy held up a clipboard with a sheaf of papers clipped neatly to it. "In my essay, I attempted to determine those ideals through simple mathematical computations and arrived at an advanced formula for what might commonly be described as 'beauty'."

He unfurled the tape measure Carl had handed him. "Using my formula, and this, we'll be sampling several members of the female population of Retroville High and charting their deviation from the ideal beauty, after which I'll be creating a scatter plot of our results and determining a standard deviation for the student body as a whole." He crossed his arms against his chest and raised his eyebrows, appearing exceedingly pleased with himself.

Carl was the first to find his voice. "Um, Jim…" he said carefully. "Not that I don't think it's a good idea to do… whatever you just said, but, um, are you saying you're going to be… measuring girls in the hallways?"

"Yeah, not that I don't love the ladies, but isn't that kind of illegal or something?" Sheen asked.

"Nonsense," Jimmy said dismissively. "This is for science. Ah!" he exclaimed, noticing two girls he recognized from his homeroom — Liz and Ashley, he was pretty sure were their names — laughing and chatting as they made their way down the hallway. They were comely enough, he supposed, in that non-intellectual-girl kind of way, one a petite brunette with pert features, the other a fairly statuesque redhead with an abundance of curves. "Perfect. Two subjects for the experiment."

"I really wish you would have told me what you wanted the tape measure for," Carl said awkwardly, taking a step away from Jimmy.

"Carl," Jimmy sighed. "I'm sure they'll understand. If nothing else, finding out the measure of their deviation will allow for personal growth and improvement." He flashed a dazzling grin and, lifting the clipboard and tape measure, walked towards the girls. "Good afternoon, ladies! If I might trouble you for a moment."

They stared at him. "Oh God, it's that nerdy kid from homeroom," the petite brunette — Ashley — whispered to Liz, the redhead.

"Jimmy Neutron," he said amiably, setting the tape measure on his clipboard and reaching out his hand in greeting.

"Yeah, we know who you are," Ashley said disdainfully, shifting her books to one arm and placing a hand on her hip.

Jimmy laughed awkwardly and coughed. "Um… I was wondering if you might be willing to help me with an experiment I'm working on?"

"What kind of experiment?" Liz asked, her arms crossed, features skeptical.

"Yeah, is it another one of those stupid exploding things you're always bringing into class?" Ashley asked.

"Oh God, Jenny was telling me about that, he singed Brian Cauley's eyebrows clean off."

"Oh my God, is _that _what did it!? He was so cute, too."

"I know, right? I was going to ask him to the dance, but Jenny said you'd have to find _some _way to deal with the eyebrows and I was like…"

_Holy Heisenberg, stop talking, you idiots. _"It has nothing to do with explosions," he managed to say with his smile intact. "As a matter of fact," he said, filling his voice with every ounce of smooth charm he could muster, "it's about _beauty_."

Ashley exchanged a glance with Liz before smiling just a little. "Beauty, huh?" she said, running a hand through her hair and raising an eyebrow. "And… you want our help?"

_Yeah, I can't believe it either_, Jimmy thought to himself. He'd made it a point to spend his teenage years steadfastly avoiding the school's female population, with their vapidity and their fashion and makeup and… _girl _things. There wasn't a single one among them who could even begin to pique his intellectual curiosity.

…well, except for…

"So!" Jimmy said a bit too enthusiastically. "I'm just going to ask you a few questions and then do a few calculations. Let's see… what color are your eyes?"

"…blue."

"Very good… and would you describe yourself as 'feminine'?"

"…I guess so, sure?"

"Excellent. Now…"

Carl and Sheen watched from their position by the lockers.

"Damn, looks like we were wrong, _hermano_," Sheen observed, eyeing the girls appreciatively. "Our man Jimmy's got _game. _Maybe I should try an experiment on… the beauty of… scatter dot vacations… what was it?"

"But what about Libby?" Carl asked.

"Who said who I was experimenting _on_?" Sheen winked.

A sudden indignant shout sounded from nearby, and they looked up to see Jimmy holding out the tape measure and gesturing wildly, his brow furrowed in confusion as Ashley shouted at him.

"Uh, Sheen," Carl began, "do you know where Libby is right now?"

"She should be down by the gym this period, why?"

"And, uh, is Cindy with her?"

"…I think so."

Carl turned and and started moving Sheen along by his shoulder."…I think we may need their help," he said uncomfortably.

* * *

_Non-geniuses just have no appreciation for science_, Jimmy thought irritably, attempting to move into a marginally more comfortable position.

The girls had been fine with the question portion. Eye color, height, personality traits… they'd taken the general survey of their characteristics in stride. In fact, they'd almost seemed flattered. But as soon as he'd unfurled the tape measure and asked for confirmation of the measurements he'd determined from a simple eye test…

He grimaced at the memory… and as he thumped his head against the low metal ceiling for the tenth time. He'd have to remember to remove 'feminine' from Ashley's self-assessment — he still wasn't entirely sure what counted as femininity, either from a medieval standpoint or a modern one, but he imagined that a willingness to shove a tape measure into a boy's mouth and fold him into a nearby locker was probably grounds for disqualification.

"Okay, boys, where the hell is he?"

Jimmy's blood ran cold as a familiarly-irritated female voice reached his ears through the metal slots in the locker. _Oh God no…_

"He was standing right here," Carl said in an awkward, hesitant voice.

"And what were _you _two doing?" Libby asked, clearly in disbelief. "Just watching him put his nerdy hands all over some random girls?"

"Well, we weren't sure what to do and Sheen started talking about experimenting with you…"

"You said _what_ now?"

"Libs, babe, I can explain—"

"Will you three shut up and help me find Freak-brain before he ends up assaulting half the girls in school!?"

And that was the moment when Jimmy began to think that he had clearly angered some kind of otherworldly deity. He had considered it during the duck attack. He had even given it a rather thorough examination as he shifted uncomfortably in the locker.

But as the locker door suddenly gave way and he tumbled out onto the linoleum floor in an ungraceful heap, one hand awkwardly holding a length of saliva-covered measuring tape, with Cindy's furious green eyes glaring down at him… that was when he decided that he was, in scientific terms, completely screwed.

He wiped his hands against his jeans and awkwardly shifted his clipboard as he came to his feet. "Uh… hi guys," he said lamely.

"_Hi guys_?" Cindy repeated in disbelief. She was clad in the fitted T-shirt and shorts of her gym uniform, her hair twisted back, cheeks reddened, skin faintly glistening with sweat, and he couldn't stop the sudden powerful desire to measure her against his beauty survey.

_And so the curse continues_, he thought irritably.

"So Dork and Dorkus Prime here," Cindy said, jerking a thumb at a sheepish Carl and Sheen, "came all the way down to the gym to get Libs and me while we were in the middle of our kickboxing lesson because you were apparently accosting half the female student body—"

"Emphasis on _body_—" Libby interrupted, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow at him.

"—and you're doing this because…?" Cindy gestured expectantly.

"You know why, Vortex," he said, thrusting the clipboard at her. "Essay revisions for Ms. Birch's class."

"And those require sexual harassment?" she asked, aghast. She took the clipboard from him with a great deal of hesitation, reading the notes he'd written.

"It wasn't sexual harassment! It wasn't sexual anything! It was scientific observation and data collection!"

"Oh, so you had to 'collect your data' all over Ashley Cabrini, is that it?" Cindy yelled, throwing the clipboard back at him.

"It's not my fault she happened to walk by! And that she was such a good sample for the project," Jimmy said after a moment, smiling smugly at her open irritation.

"Yeah, and the only way you'd ever get _near _her is with some lame-ass 'research' line!" Cindy said, crossing her arms and glaring at him.

"What the hell is your problem, Vortex?"

"Oh, I think you know what my 'problem' is!"

"I'm afraid you'll have to _narrow it down _a little, which _particular _problem of yours are we talking about?"

"What! You rude little—"

Standing a short distance away from the quickly-escalating argument, Libby dropped her forehead to her palm and sighed.

"Want to go see if the cafeteria has any of those sun chip things?" she asked flatly.

"Sounds good," Sheen said, casting an uncomfortable look at Jimmy and Cindy before taking her hand.

"My doctor says I'm allergic to two different wheat proteins in those chips…" Carl began awkwardly.

"…I'm surprised you even realized they were female, what with your _amazing and boundless _experience with the opposite sex!"

"It was pretty easy to figure out, I just used _you _as a baseline and looked for _the exact opposite_!"

"…but I guess I could give them another shot," he finished. The three beat a hasty retreat, with only the occasional worried glance behind them.

Jimmy and Cindy, for their part, were standing nose-to-nose, grinding their teeth, eyes boring furiously into one another's.

After a long moment of tense, angry silence, Jimmy finally took a step back. "Truce?" he said gruffly, reaching his hand out and avoiding Cindy's gaze.

"…truce," she agreed begrudgingly, reaching out to briefly take his hand. Her palm was warm and smooth against the calluses he'd built up from his work in the lab, and it was a surprisingly pleasant sensation.

He coughed awkwardly and pulled his hand away from hers, staring at his shoes.

"Look, Neutron," Cindy began with a sigh, "would you please let me help you on your revisions for Ms. Birch's class? At least enough that you won't get slapped with half a dozen restraining orders from the female student body for being a total creepy loser?"

Jimmy narrowed his eyes at her. "'Total creepy loser' seems a bit harsh within the bounds of a truce, Vortex," he said pointedly. But Cindy returned his look, and he sighed and leaned back against a row of nearby lockers.

"I'm still confident I can complete the revisions and obtain an A on my own merits," he said, but his words sounded unconvincing even to his own ears.

Cindy came to lean against the locker next to him, observing him with a critical eye. "This is your problem, Neutron," she said matter-of-factly. "You can never admit that _maybe _you can't do everything, or maybe someone might be just a fraction better than you at something, and it's _not _the end of the world."

"And what is it you're a 'fraction' better at?" he asked, tilting his gaze down to meet hers. She was a bit closer than he'd thought, but he forced himself to hold his position so she wouldn't read the sudden awkward discomfort in his posture.

Cindy scoffed. "At least I understand what Ms. Birch was talking about." She sighed, then brightened slightly as she noticed a dog-eared flyer taped to the far wall. She hoisted herself up and went over to tug it down, smoothing an errant piece of tape back onto the wall. "_This_," she said, handing it to him.

"The Valentine's Day semi-formal?" he asked, observing the flyer with a critical eye.

"Look, the assignment was about understanding romantic idealization and finding examples of it, right?" She thrust a finger at the flyer. "Well, you've got one right here. I mean, why do you think girls dress up for dances like this? Our dresses are usually either too hot or too cold and our shoes hurt like hell and our hair is practically a _fire hazard _because of all the product we have to layer into it…"

"Get to the point, Vortex."

"The _point _is," she sighed, "we do it for the look on a guy's face when we come down the stairs. Like… like we're the most beautiful woman in the world." She was suddenly quiet for a moment and leaned back. "It doesn't usually last," she said quietly. "I mean, Cinderella only had until midnight, we usually have until our date takes us home and we take off all our makeup and change into yoga pants. But in that moment where you…" She hesitated. "…where you're as pretty as you can make yourself and the… guy you like is waiting for you and he just lights up and can't even speak because you're just so… _everything_… I think that's what she was talking about."

She suddenly crossed her arms protectively across her chest and dropped her head, seeming to retreat into herself.

Jimmy observed her curiously, not sure what to make of her sudden defensive posture. "Have you had that happen?" he asked.

"Who says I haven't?" she said gruffly, not meeting his curious gaze.

"Well, I mean…" He scuffed the toe of one shoe awkwardly. "I know you're not… you know. Seeing anyone."

"You don't have to be 'seeing someone' to scare up a date for a dance, _Neutron_," she spat. "And like you're one to talk, anyway. You probably got the thrill of your life today getting that close to a girl who only slapped you _after _you talked to her."

Jimmy narrowed his eyes. "Well, not all girls can be as charming and _desirable _as you, Vortex," he said. "I'm amazed that half the boys in school aren't clamoring for the chance to date you and have your uncreative abuse leveled at them on a daily basis."

"I'll have you know there are plenty of boys in this school who would give their right arm to date me," Cindy said angrily, lining her toes up with his and glaring up at him.

Jimmy laughed humorlessly. "Yeah, and if they weren't offering it willingly, I'm sure you'd find a way to steal a limb anyway for their failure to pay proper tribute to _the queen_."

"At least I have people interested in me."

"And who says I don't?"

"Well you're sure as hell endearing yourself to the girls in school by using them as _data samples_!"

"They're not even worth my time if they can't appreciate scientific inquiry!"

"Ha! _Scientific inquiry_? Is _that _what they're calling it these days? Be honest, Neutron, when's the last time you even kissed—"

Cindy's words ended abruptly as they sunk in. They'd drawn close again in their arguing — a little too close.

She had an unpleasant knack for cutting down to the bone with her insults, Jimmy thought, but there was a flash of guilt and discomfort in her eyes as he stared down at her.

She knew exactly the last time he'd kissed someone.

She'd been there.

"Just forget it," Cindy said after a moment, shaking her head and moving away from him.

He wasn't sure if he surprised her or himself more when he reached out and caught her wrist.

She stared at him, something fearful and expectant and questioning in her eyes.

"Cindy…" he started, but he wasn't sure why he'd stopped her or why he'd said her name or why that look in her eyes and the faded memory of his lips against hers were causing a sharp, sudden pain in his chest.

He didn't have time to consider it as Cindy shook off his hand, a bit more gently than he'd have expected. "Look," she said with a sigh, "I have to get back to gym. Figure it out. You know where to find me if you decide to stop being an insufferable moron for once."

He watched her as she walked away, observing the curving lines of her gym uniform, the defensive hunch of her shoulders, the slightly irritated glance she threw over her shoulder at him.

After she was out of sight, he reached down to retrieve his clipboard and was about to clip the dance flyer onto it before observing his notes. There were a few splotches on them from where Ashley had snapped his pen in half, spilling ink over one of the diagrams, but they were still legible.

He couldn't find a spare pen. He'd have to wait until he got back to the lab to compile his meager data samples.

Which was probably a good thing, as he felt a sudden urge to plot the initials "C.V." into his idealization observations. He smiled humorlessly and tapped a blank space on the other end of the scale.

"Outlier," he said, very quietly.

* * *

**CONTINUED IN CHAPTER THREE: "SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY LIKE THE NOCTURNAL ROTATION OF THE EARTH" **


	3. She Walks in Beauty

_**A/N:**__ Man, this one was hard to write. Many drafts and many, many revision hours later, I'm finally content enough with it enough to publish it. It probably could have been split into two chapters, but it felt more… right, I guess, to just have it as an extra-long chapter. _

_This chapter tends far more strongly towards drama than humor, and we're finally beginning to head into the J/C portion of the story, so "you're welcome" or "I'm sorry," whichever you feel better applies. _

_(Literary references: The chapter title references the famous Lord Byron lyric poem, "She Walks in Beauty". It's Romantic era, not medieval, so they wouldn't actually be reading it in Ms. Birch's class, but I couldn't resist using it. The poem they read in class is from Christine de Pizan's 'The Book of the Duke of True Lovers'. It is gorgeous, and it has some good foreshadowing in the context of this story if you want to Google it. Actually, you should do that anyway, it's good stuff.)_

* * *

**Roman de la Rivality **

**Chapter Three: "She Walks in Beauty Like the Nocturnal Rotation of the Earth"**

* * *

Jimmy skidded around the corner, wincing slightly at the sharp pain in his knee but forcing himself to keep moving. Droplets of water dripped from the ends of his hair and unpleasantly sluiced down the back of his shirt, and he knew he reeked of smoke, but there was no time left to worry about his appearance. _10:05… _he thought desperately. _Maybe she's still taking attendance… I can still make it…! _

In his haste, he rushed right past the closed door to Ms. Birch's English class, and cursed under his breath as he quickly double-backed and flung the door open with more force than he'd intended. Any chance at an understated entrance was erased by the sharp bang the door made as it crashed against the wall.

The class stared at him as he stood in the doorway, and Ms. Birch looked up from the poem she was in the process of reading aloud, peering over her glasses with a frown.

"Um…" Jimmy began awkwardly, tugging a stray wire from his singed hair. "…sorry I'm late?"

Ms. Birch raised a curious eyebrow at his disheveled appearance: his clothes were damp, his hair was in stark disarray, and there were smudges of soot across his face, arms, and hands.

"Bad morning, James?" she asked rhetorically.

Jimmy laughed uncomfortably and rubbed the back of his neck. "Well," he began, "I was experimenting with my Poetry Analyzer and I didn't realize how late it'd gotten and it kind of… well, had a _slight_ exothermic reaction in the middle of Dante Alighieri and by the time I'd extinguished the fires and explained everything to the fire chief…"

Ms. Birch sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose beneath her glasses. "Just sit down and take out your homework, James."

"Yes, ma'am," Jimmy said, chastened. He'd been delighted to finally hit a growth spurt a few years earlier, but he found himself suddenly missing his youthful shortness as he ducked his head and hunched his shoulders against the curious gazes of his classmates as he made his way to his seat.

"All right," Ms. Birch said. "We haven't gotten too far in, so why don't we start again at the beginning for James' benefit? I think we'll just go around the room and have each of you read a line or two. Page 227 in the text, James, Christine de Pizan's Ballade XII, 'Que ses joyes ne sont fors que droit vent'. Oleander, would you start, please?"

_This class is going to kill me_, Jimmy thought as he tugged his textbook out of his backpack and flipped it open. The Poetry Analyzer had seemed like such a good idea at first that he could hardly believe he hadn't used it as his first line of defense in his project revisions. How was he supposed to remember that he'd last calibrated it for American Romantic poetry? Or that inputting European poetry into an American poetic algorithm would cause that big an explosion? Or that utilizing paper copies of the poems instead of digital readings would cause the fire to spread so quickly?

…okay, maybe that last one wasn't so surprising. He'd gotten things under control quickly enough, but not so quickly that the fire department hadn't broken down the door to his lab and extinguished the flames… as well as whatever remaining enthusiasm he had for his paper revisions as he stood dripping-wet and soot-stained in the middle of the room, awkwardly staring down a company of very irritated firemen.

_If only I'd had time to shower and change, _Jimmy thought, running one hand through his damp hair. _I've probably given Cindy a good year's worth of material just by showing up like this. _

He glanced at the desk beside him, fully expecting to meet an amused smirk and a pair of familiarly-narrowed eyes, but Cindy wasn't even looking at him. She wasn't following along in her textbook as their classmates recited from the poem Ms. Birch had assigned, either. She was just staring blankly towards the front of the room, not focused on anything in particular. She was as neat as he was disheveled, her hair perfectly coiffed, makeup expertly applied, dressed in a soft sweater and skirt that emphasized every sloping curve of her athletic figure. But she was just a fraction too pale, and she kept biting the inside of her lip, something she only did when she was upset.

Jimmy turned uncomfortably back to the poem in front of him. Was she sick? She'd seemed fine yesterday… well, she'd had no problem insulting him, at any rate.

Maybe she was worried about the dance or something. He'd noticed in his mad dash through the halls that they'd cordoned off the gym with thick paper streamers and garishly-colored posters reminding any passerby about the valentine's dance that night, as if the giant cardboard cutout hearts and repeating Cupid motif could be for anything else. Valentine's Day wasn't until Monday, of course, but who ever heard of a dance on a Monday night?

_She's probably just worried that her hair'll be off by a picometer or that they won't have just the right shade of pink nail polish at the salon, _Jimmy thought, rolling his eyes a little. _Like whatever sub-intellect she tricked into taking her would even notice. _

They'd gone up and down the rows, each student reading a few lines of the poem. Cindy awakened from her reverie long enough to read the final few lines, but her voice lacked its usual strength and clarity. She was normally one of the finest readers in class (unsurprising, given how much she clearly liked talking, Jimmy thought with a small smirk), but she seemed distracted, and the lyric beauty of the poem ended up sounding more like a eulogy.

"…thank you, Cynthia," Ms. Birch said, carefully observing her out of the corner of her eye. "Now, let's look at the poem as a whole a little more closely." She turned to write a few lines on the board. "What do you think Christine is saying with the repetition of the final line throughout the poem? James?"

_Or maybe he got the wrong sub-species of rose for her corsage. I can only imagine what she'd do to him. 'You __**idiot**__, this is Rosa hugonis,__not Rosa chinensis! You've ruined my whole __**life**__!' _

"…James."

_Or, oh no, what if he only found __**three **__white horses for her carriage instead of four? Oh, the __**horror**__, I can't imagine how she'd ever show her face in school again. _

"Mr. Neutron."

_To be fair, he probably can't count that high, so…_

"James, you can admire Cynthia to your heart's content after class, but right now you need to pay attention to the lesson."

A swell of muted laughter sounded through the class as Jimmy turned the gaze he hadn't realized he'd fixated on Cindy sharply back to the board, a deep flush rising to his cheeks. "Sorry," he managed to mumble even as he began to compute the volume beneath his desk and determine whether or not he could fit comfortably under it.

…although, frankly, he thought he'd take the physical discomfort over his giggling classmates in a nanosecond.

Ms. Birch sighed and shook her head before calling on another student.

_Cindy's going to be having a field day with this one_, Jimmy thought with a sigh, stealing a glance at her as Ms. Birch conversed with the student who had answered her question.

But her familiar mockery was still conspicuously absent. Cindy spared him just a brief, quizzical glance before turning her attention back to the mote of dust suspended in the middle distance that seemed to have fascinated her.

_She'll probably be back to normal after class_, Jimmy thought uncomfortably, coughing and nodding in solemn intellectual agreement as he noticed Ms. Birch looking at him with open irritation. He didn't particularly miss Cindy's snide quips and mocking stares… but anything had to be better than this new, worrying quiet.

* * *

Jimmy jumped slightly when the bell rang at 11:15. He'd been so preoccupied with dodging Ms. Birch's irritated glances and worrying about Cindy's pronounced lack thereof that he hadn't even realized the time.

"Okay, that's it for this week," Ms. Birch said. "Remember, if you're turning in a revised paper, it needs to be on my desk first thing Monday morning if you want me to look at it for supplementary credit. Now, I know Monday is Valentine's Day, and you've all probably checked out for the day because you're thinking about the dance tonight, but I want you to seriously think about turning in a revision if you're unhappy with your grade. I want to see everyone's best work on this assignment." She gave Jimmy a pointed look.

_Real subtle, Ms. Birch_, he thought irritably.

Ms. Birch just offered him a small smile. "Have a good weekend, everyone," she said simply, moving to wipe down the board.

"Yeah, sure," Cindy muttered beside him. Jimmy stared at her curiously. She hadn't said a word since reading her selection from the poem earlier in class.

"Something wrong, Vortex?" he asked lightly as he slotted his books into his backpack.

Cindy narrowed her eyes at him venomously. "Like _you _care," she spat, hoisting her books against her chest and moving towards the doorway.

Jimmy followed her, bristling slightly. "I _don't _care," he said. "It's just idle curiosity. Simple observation clearly indicates that something's off with you today. It's not like you to wait until this late in the day to find _some _way to insult me."

"I've got a lot on my mind, okay?"

"More on your mind than strategies for making my life miserable? That seems unlikely."

Cindy scoffed and rolled her eyes as they walked side-by-side down the hallway. "Forgive me if I don't spend every waking minute thinking about _you_, Neutron. I know you've probably devised some complex theorem that demonstrates that _you're _the only person in the universe who matters, but I guarantee that no one cares about that stupid oversized head of yours a fraction as much as you do."

Jimmy threw her an irritated scowl. "And to think I was almost starting to miss your insults, Vortex. Seriously, what's wrong with you today? You're even less pleasant than usual, assuming such a thing is humanly possible."

A pair of students from the school spirit association rushed by them then, arms laden with colorful decorations and supplies, and a slight flash of pain crossed Cindy's face. It was gone as quickly as it had appeared, but Jimmy saw it just the same.

"Is it about the dance, then?" he asked lightly, raising an eyebrow.

"Like. You. Care," Cindy repeated through clenched teeth, holding her books just a fraction more closely. "And I know _you're _not going — you and Sisyphus have got a few long nights ahead of you as you desperately try to return to your so-called academic glory in Ms. Birch's class. Good luck with that, by the way."

"Well, I guess being so _high-and-mighty _and not having any revisions to do means you can spend that much more time obsessing over your reflection before tonight. Let me guess," Jimmy said, smirking at her and hoisting his backpack over one shoulder. "You managed to rope some brain-dead jock into taking you, and he couldn't find the right size glass slippers, right?"

Cindy stopped suddenly and stared at him.

"Or did he get confused and eat your corsage by mistake?"

"Stop it, Neutron," she said in a dark voice.

"Or, God forbid, did he _not _get down on one knee when he asked you? What a tremendous oversight _that _would have—"

His words came to a sudden stop as Cindy reached out and slapped him across the face.

Hard.

Jimmy clutched his cheek and stared at her in bewilderment. "What the hell was that—" he trailed off as he saw the sudden swell of tears in her eyes, and even though he had no idea what was going on, he somehow knew he'd crossed a line.

"Go to hell, Neutron," she said, and the quiet pain in her voice was a thousand times worse than the anger he'd expected.

Jimmy could feel the tell-tale soreness of a bruise beginning to flower as he gingerly probed the muscles of his cheek with his fingertips. "Cindy?" he asked hesitantly.

She didn't respond, just hefted her books and walked quickly away from him, accidentally bumping into several students as she tucked her chin against her chest and pushed her way through the crowd.

Jimmy watched her go, a sharp, sudden pain in his chest. _Girls_, he thought, the familiar exasperated admonition of many a teenage boy, but it did nothing to ease the sudden discomfort that had settled over him as he watched her go.

* * *

"You know, you'd think I'd have figured it out after all these years, but I still have no idea how someone so damn smart can be such an all-fired _idiot _all the time."

Jimmy sighed and rested his forehead against the cool metal exterior of his locker as Libby appeared beside him during free period, her arms crossed and eyes narrowed accusatorily.

"Let me guess: this is about Cindy," he said flatly.

"Oh, you think?" Libby snorted derisively. "Look, Jimmy, I know you two have been fighting for years and you wouldn't know how to talk to a girl if she straight-up handed you cue cards, but you mess with my girl Cindy and you mess with me, all right? So I'm only sayin' this once: Back. Off."

"Message noted," Jimmy said, turning his bruised cheek for Libby's inspection. "And believe me: received."

Libby raised her eyebrows a fraction but quickly settled back into indignation. "Sounds like you deserved it after what you said to her."

Jimmy rolled his eyes and dropped his forehead into his palm. "Look, Libby," he said, "we just had an argument, like we do every day. She threw some snide comments at me about my paper revisions, I threw some back at her about the dance, she slapped me and stormed off. Honestly, I was going to ask _you _what the hell's going on with her today."

"None of your damn business, but don't you say one more word to her about the dance, you hear me?"

"What's the big deal? She didn't have any problems talking about it yesterday."

"Well, that was yesterday. _Today_ you don't talk about it to her, or around her, or _ever_, unless you want to find out what your own teeth taste like."

"Technically, they're bone, so they'd taste like—" Jimmy stopped as Libby gave him a glare that could melt titanium.

"Be. Nice. To her," Libby growled. "Got it?"

Jimmy nodded, comprehension slowly beginning to dawn on him. "She's not going to the dance, is she."

Libby poked him hard in the chest. "I'm not gettin' into it with you so you can just lord it over her later. And I know _you're _not going either, brain-boy, so you're not exactly in a position to make fun of _her_."

Jimmy had to give Libby credit for knowing him so well. While he didn't exactly relish seeing Cindy so openly upset (he had to imagine it was equally uncomfortable for the both of them), his pride had been more than a bit stung the previous day when Cindy had mocked him for his inability to get a date. At least he'd struck out without _trying_. Cindy'd probably tried plenty and been unable to find anyone willing to put up with her for the entire night.

_So, plenty of guys would give their right arm to date you, Vortex? _Jimmy thought somewhat maliciously._ You've got how many people interested in you? You act like you're so far above me when it comes to social interactions, but looks like we're on the same page with this one, doesn't it? _

Jimmy shook his head a little at the surprisingly vengeful tone of his thoughts. "I admit I don't entirely understand how these things work," he said, "but couldn't she just go by herself if it's so important to her?"

Libby stared at him in disbelief. "_Boys_," she sighed after a moment. "Y'all are just so clueless. I mean, I did tell her she could come with Sheen and me if she wanted and I'd just make him get us drinks and sit in the corner while we girlfriended it up all night, but I don't blame her for not wanting to go now. You know how proud she is."

"Oh, _very _keenly."

"Like _you're _one to talk," Libby rolled her eyes. "Look, I know you two still have last-period physics together, so surprise me and be nice to her for once, okay? Run your mouth again and my girl may not let you off with just a slap this time — and neither will I. Get it?"

"Got it," Jimmy agreed, closing his locker door. He awkwardly slung his backpack onto his shoulder. "So, um…" he began hesitantly. "…is she… you know, okay? She looked… pretty out of it in English class."

Libby stared at him curiously. "…she'll be okay," she said. "Nobody takes that girl down for long. _You _should know that more than anyone." She gave him one last pointed look and sauntered off.

Jimmy stared after her. _This holiday needs to be over_, he thought. _I think it's made the entire female student body completely lose their minds._

* * *

Jimmy had hoped to avoid Cindy for a few moments before their shared physics class, just long enough for him to compose his thoughts after his talk with Libby, but she was already in her seat, tapping the eraser of her pencil against her notebook in an erratic rhythm.

"Hey," he said quietly, slipping into his seat beside her.

"Hey," she responded, not looking at him. "You don't look quite as disgusting as you did this morning."

_Be nice, be nice_… Jimmy thought, clenching and unclenching his fists slightly. "Thanks. I showered and changed after gym. I'll pass for human."

She smiled faintly at him, and a sudden warmth filled his chest. _See, she can be nice_, he thought. _Sometimes. Occasionally. You can do this. _

He sighed and turned in his seat to face her, resting his elbows against his knees and locking his fingers together. "Look, Cindy," he said, "Libby caught me during free period. She… told me about the dance."

Cindy laughed humorlessly and rested her head back against the desk behind her. "Oh, did she?" she said. "Thanks so much, Libs, just what I needed today."

"Well, she also threw out a lot of colorful epithets about my intellectual capacity, or lack thereof, and a very stern warning to be nice to you unless I wanted to be hurt very, very badly. That was the implication, anyway."

"She told you, then," Cindy said flatly. Her eyes had taken on that dull, empty look that had so unnerved him in English class earlier that morning.

"Bits and pieces. I kind of guessed the rest." Jimmy sighed and leaned forward a little. "For what it's worth, Cindy… I'm sorry."

"It's fine," she said tersely.

He took a deep breath. "I mean, what you were saying yesterday…" He rubbed his temple awkwardly. "It just seemed… really important to you."

Cindy was silent, staring ahead into nothingness.

Jimmy sighed and rested his head in his hands. "I'm really bad at this 'being nice' thing, aren't I."

"You're really bad at a lot of things."

Jimmy sighed and looked up at her in exasperation. "Can't you just take an apology, Vortex? I'm sorry, okay?"

Cindy turned and focused her gaze on him, all pain and pointed anger. "Guess that makes it okay, then, doesn't it. You know, Reed apologized, too."

Jimmy stared at her curiously. "…Reed?"

"Although I have to say, you made _your _fake apology sound a _lot _more sincere," Cindy continued. "He barely bothered trying with his. I'm still out over two hundred bucks for a dress I'll never get to wear and I have to stay home on a Friday night watching documentaries with my parents instead of going to the dance, but he was _sorry_, so I guess I'm probably getting upset over nothing, huh, Neutron?"

"Cindy…" he started uneasily.

She smiled at him, and it was equal parts cruelty and pain. "Out of curiosity, did you ever find out what Ashley Cabrini's measurements were? I know her IQ's about the same as my shoe size, but she's stacked enough in other areas to make up for it. That's what Reed said, anyway. But you seemed to notice, too, so I guess you knew that."

"Cindy…" Jimmy repeated awkwardly. "Libby… just told me you weren't going to the dance. I didn't know anything about Reed, or Ashley, or, well, anything. I... just wanted to know if you were okay. You know."

Cindy stared at him, her eyes growing wide and an embarrassed flush rising to her cheeks. Jimmy suddenly wasn't sure where to look, and settled for gazing at the scuffed toes of his sneakers and wishing he'd finished his desk-to-Neutron volume formula earlier that day.

"Great," Cindy said, dropping her head against her desk. "Just perfect."

Jimmy stole an uneasy glance at her, unsure what to say.

"Well?" she asked, and there was venom in her tone.

"…well what?" Jimmy asked hesitantly.

Cindy stared at him in disbelief. "Are you really going to do this?" she asked. "Really? You're going to make me set up _your _digs at me?"

"Cindy, I wasn't going to—"

"_Just __**say**__ it, Neutron_," she yelled, leaning over her chair, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and forcing him to meet her eyes. "Who'd want to go out with me, right? Who'd want to deal with my, what was it, 'uncreative abuse' every day? Especially when there's such a _fine female specimen _like Ashley around? What do you want to say, Neutron? What's the insult you're going with today? Just say it, damn you, _say it!_"

Her voice broke slightly on her final words, and she pulled away from him. She settled back into her seat and squared her shoulders, biting the inside of her lip and swallowing hard. "It'd be easier if you'd just insult me like you always do," she said tightly, "instead of sitting there staring at me with that stupid pitying look on your face."

Jimmy was completely at a loss for words. But seeing the beginnings of tears in her eyes and the obvious lines of pain in her posture was too much to bear, even for him.

"Cindy, I'm…" he began, reaching towards her with one hand.

"Okay, class, take your seats, I want to get right into today's lesson on quarks."

Mr. MacCulley's bright introduction, so at odds with the pained tension that had sprung up between them, interrupted Jimmy's hesitant attempt at comfort.

He hazarded a brief glance at Cindy, but her back was straight, chin held high, her eyes bright and focused as she set pen to paper and began dutifully taking notes.

The faint shimmer of tears was only noticeable if you were paying very, very close attention to her.

Which, Jimmy realized with a faint note of surprise as he tried to pull his worried gaze away from her, he always was.

* * *

Later that night, Jimmy staggered into his bedroom, arms laden with a number of heavy poetic and literary volumes, Goddard trotting behind him hauling several more.

"What an enthralling way to spend a Friday evening, eh, Goddard?" Jimmy asked sardonically.

Goddard barked a question at him.

"I know, I could probably come up with an invention to make this easier. But after the ducks and the girls at school and, well, the explosion this morning…" He sighed. "I figured it might be time to just go at this one the old-fashioned way. Just read through the assigned texts again and see if something stands out."

He sat down heavily in the chair at his desk and smoothed out his graded paper onto the worn surface, the offending grade Ms. Birch had given him crossed out with a thick black marker. _Dig deeper_, she'd said.

He retrieved the typed assignment from his English notebook and began to re-read it carefully.

_What are the poets we've read thus far saying about love and beauty_? Ms. Birch had written. _What do you feel is the motivation and/or artistic justification for the idealized language they use? Utilize examples from the texts and compare their understanding of love with a modern interpretation, either through your own experiences or portrayals in popular media. Be creative, and be heartfelt. _

_This is an assignment about you and the texts — not just the texts themselves._

'About you'.

About _him_.

Was that the "extra level" Ms. Birch had been talking about? Jimmy thought uneasily. He thumbed through the neatly-stapled pages of his paper, observing the carefully-constructed sentences and flawless diagrams.

That must have been it, he realized slowly. It was the only thing missing, the only absent element. His logical brilliance and scientific reasoning skills were evident in every sentence, every phrase he'd written. His paper was a magnificent study of the thematic structure and underlying formulas that comprised the texts they'd examined…

…but there was nothing of him in it. Not really. Nothing deeply personal, at any rate.

Jimmy leaned back in his chair, any number of uncomfortable thoughts crossing his mind. He'd chosen to frame the assignment in a familiar context — in logic, in science, in statistics and formulas. Throughout his education, his teachers had always been so impressed by his overwhelming scholastic achievements that they'd let him get away with doing pretty much whatever he wanted, while they gaped in awe at his intellect and fell over themselves to give him every A they possibly could.

Ms. Birch saw his intellect. Noted it. Analyzed it.

And for the first time… it wasn't enough.

He re-read the assignment. _An understanding of love and beauty_, Jimmy thought.

If he was being honest… how long had it been since he'd really thought about either?

It wasn't his _fault_, not really. As he'd grown, Jimmy's academics had become even more important than they'd been in his youth. In addition to his normal classes at Retroville High, he was enrolled in online courses from three different and equally-prestigious universities, had countless conference calls with various institutions regarding his inventions and scientific research, had an entire wall full of trophies and awards. He was one of the most preeminent minds in the country, and he was only seventeen. There was still so much to learn, so many skills to hone, so many things to discover, invent, perfect.

He'd had to make sacrifices for that to happen, he thought, staring blankly at the paper in front of him. And it'd been easy to sacrifice emotional entanglements in favor of his research.

_Maybe too easy_, Jimmy thought uncomfortably.

He thought back to Cindy's snide remarks the previous day about his dating history, his experience with women… and his pronounced lack thereof. They'd angered him, stung him, caused him to retaliate in full-force… because they were true. He _hadn't_ really dated. He'd never had a serious girlfriend. He hadn't even taken the time to appreciate any of the girls at school on anything other than a base, superficial level in ages.

He didn't understand the heart of what Ms. Birch wanted him to understand.

And maybe… maybe too much time had passed. Maybe he couldn't understand it anymore.

Jimmy's breath caught in his throat at the thought. How could he _not _understand something? _Anything_? Even something as foreign and esoteric as this?

But the fact was… his experiments had failed. He'd spent the past week desperately trying to think of ways to derive the transcendent truth that Ms. Birch wanted through his familiar scientific channels… but he was beginning to realize that it wouldn't be enough. She wanted to see his thoughts, his feelings, his _heart_.

And he was beginning to wonder if he'd somehow lost it to the turning of the years, even though he'd never really had occasion to realize it was gone.

It was a deeply depressing thought, and Jimmy slowly sank his head down to rest on his crossed arms, his brow furrowed. _If that's it, _he thought pensively, _I've probably got bigger problems than trying to get an A in Ms. Birch's class._

A sudden glow of light across the street caught his eye, and Jimmy raised his head curiously.

It was a soft, muted light, not the harsh brightness of overhead bulbs, but more the rounded glow of a small table lamp. It was illuminating Cindy's bedroom through the open curtains flanking her oversized bay window.

Jimmy stared at the light uneasily, glancing to it and back to his desk, attempting to decide whether or not he should turn his gaze fully away from what surely counted as an invasion of privacy, when Cindy appeared in the doorway, smoothing down the skirt of a flowing dark-blue dress. She stopped in front of the full-length mirror propped beside her closet, turning this way and that, the fabric of the dress flowing like midnight silk as she examined her figure with a carefully-appraising eye.

Jimmy watched as she turned, unable to tear his gaze away from the smooth, pale expanse of her skin bared by the clean lines of the dress. It wasn't immodest by any means, but in addition to her bared arms and shoulders, it was cut deeply in the back, exposing the column of her neck and back as she twisted her long blond hair into a makeshift chignon.

_Maybe she's going to the dance after all_, Jimmy thought uneasily, glancing down just long enough to read the display on his digital desk clock before raising his eyes back up to observe Cindy as she continued to adjust her gown.

_This is wrong_, he thought. _This is just… so many kinds of wrong_.

But he couldn't look away.

Cindy had been such an awkward creature when they were growing up, all skinny limbs and piercing glares. Even now, Jimmy often found her objective beauty lost beneath her snide remarks and taunting laughter. But as she raised her arms to tuck aside a stray tendril of hair, all slender curves and grace… she was magnificent.

And he couldn't stop staring at her.

Jimmy started slightly as Goddard nudged his ankle, offering his zoom feature with a questioning bark.

"Goddard!" he hissed, nudging the robotic dog back gently. "This is already questionable enough as it is!"

Goddard barked another question.

"Well, yes, I could just close my blinds, but this is…" he trailed off as Cindy tugged at her bodice. "…wow."

Goddard barked again.

Jimmy flushed. "Research, Goddard," he said firmly. "This is _research_."

It was a clear night with a full winter's moon, and the broad frame of Cindy's window was silhouetted in silver starlight that contrasted with the warm lamplight inside. There were some kind of metallic threads in the fabric of her dress that shimmered as she turned. Her hair shone like spun gold.

Jimmy glanced from her to his notes, then back again. _This doesn't make any sense_, he thought, somewhat desperately. _This… this is __**Cindy**__. Come on, now, Ms. Birch, I'm getting on-board with compromising logic a __**little **__for the sake of augmenting my understanding of the subject at hand, but this is just way too much! _

Jimmy's dazed stare became a slightly confused frown as Cindy moved to an angle where he could see her face reflected in the mirror before her.

She was a fair distance away, but even without Goddard's binocular zoom function, he could see that she wasn't smiling. And he'd known her long enough (and, he had to admit, knew her well enough) to read pain and upset in the tight lines of her face, the hunch of her shoulders, the slight crease in her forehead.

Then she leaned forward suddenly, bracing one arm against the mirror frame, and dropped her head to her chest. Her shoulders began to shake slightly, and he knew she was crying.

And Jimmy didn't understand it at all, but he suddenly found his heart clenching painfully as he fought the faint sting of tears as well.

Someone must have called her from downstairs, and Cindy straightened, scrubbed one hand across her cheeks and called back, sparing one last glance at her reflection before tilting the mirror away from her.

_Cindy… _he thought, unconsciously leaning forward in his chair just a fraction.

He blushed crimson as she started to pull out of the dress. _Okay, now's the point where we look away like a gentleman, _he told himself, but the logical part of his brain seemed miniscule in comparison to the rest of him that was currently mesmerized by the sight of her smooth, pale curves in the golden lamplight.

Goddard barked, and there was a note of reproach in his tone.

"Okay, Goddard, blinds!" Jimmy said, dropping his eyes back to his notes as Goddard shuttered the automatic blinds he'd installed several years back.

"Just a brief moral oversight," Jimmy said awkwardly, uncapping his pen and steadfastly avoiding Goddard's gaze.

_Guess she just wanted to see what it looked like on one last time, _he thought, turning his notebook to a fresh page and glancing up at the now-obscured window.

Jimmy's cheeks were still burning slightly from his inadvertent foray into voyeurism, and a dull pain radiated from his bruised one. Although he was still sure Cindy had been out of line for hitting him… he was beginning to understand why she'd done it. His guilt over the ill-advised taunts he'd thrown at her that morning had ended up having the entirety of physics class to begin festering, and it'd done so enthusiastically. He had tried his level best to apologize again after class, but Cindy had just brushed by him with a little more force than was likely coincidental, and by the time he made it past his exiting classmates and into the hallway, she'd disappeared.

Okay, so he hadn't _known _that her date had dumped her when they'd been arguing, but that probably didn't make much difference, at least in Cindy's mind. He still didn't have the faintest idea why dances were so important to girls, but the fact remained that they _were _important, and getting stood up for one had to hurt.

_Especially when you look so… _Jimmy thought distantly, staring towards the window.

Reed, she'd said his name was. Had to be Reed Bonner, one of the members of the boys' track team. Jimmy had seen him smiling and laughing with Cindy on a few of the occasions he'd found himself passing by track practice on his way to a lecture or presentation after school. Reed was… well, exactly the type of guy girls seemed to go for: tall, athletic, all perfect teeth and toned muscles.

_But he's not in __**any **__AP classes, _Jimmy thought. In fact, he was probably the exact type of dimwitted jock he and Cindy would have thoroughly enjoyed sharing amused glances over during class. He'd be the type to make some horrifyingly basic error like confusing hydrogen and helium and Jimmy would raise an eyebrow at Cindy from across the classroom and she'd roll her eyes and smile and he'd be content to have something resembling an intellectual equal, just for a minute, just as long as it was her.

He thought about Cindy's heartfelt comments about the dance the day before. Had Reed already told her? Is that why she'd gotten so upset? Jimmy had learned over the years that Cindy was generally only at her absolute angriest when she was hurt, and he had a bad tendency to be in the line of fire when she was, even on the rare occasions when it wasn't his fault.

_I wouldn't let it bother you, Cindy_, Jimmy thought dismissively towards the window. _Someone of Reed's probable low intellect isn't worth getting upset over. He probably can't even solve the most basic quadratic equation. _

It was simple. Logical. Cindy was smart. Very smart. Reed was likely not, and definitely not as smart as her even if he was. Ergo, his rejection should in no way be a source of emotional upset on Cindy's part.

But logic was slowly fading in the face of the memory of her shoulders trembling as she stood at her mirror, strikingly beautiful in a dress no one else would ever see. His heart clenched painfully at the image, and he thought of the pain and anger he'd seen in Cindy's eyes earlier in the day and imagined something similar must have been reflected in his own eyes at that moment.

_He's not worth crying over, Cindy_, Jimmy thought, standing and opening the blinds. Her room was dark, curtains drawn, but he stared across the street anyway. _You can do better than that. You __**are**__ better than that. _

And, with a start, Jimmy realized that not only was she better than Reed… she was better than _him _in some ways.

The realization was enough to send him sprawling back onto his bed, slightly dazed and light-headed.

He'd never admit it out loud. He wasn't even particularly fond of the mental realization.

But it was true.

Cindy wasn't perfect. Not by a long shot. She was loud, opinionated, sharp-tongued and vicious when she put her mind to it. And Ashley, as he'd noted the day before, was a very fine sample of femininity, just the right proportions, bright blue eyes, sloping curves and a dazzling smile.

But that was all.

Cindy was… _Cindy_. She was beautiful, but more importantly, she was _smart_, she was fierce, she was brave and powerful. She could stand toe-to-toe against him in his intellectual pursuits, even though he was supposed to be absolutely untouchable. She could match wits with him in verbal warfare, eyes blazing into his as she twisted her words into carefully-calibrated missiles.

And she had something he didn't, something he'd lost as the years had turned.

Cindy could effortlessly understand the concepts of love and beauty he'd struggled with from the moment Ms. Birch had assigned them. Jimmy had no idea if she actually loved Reed (and he couldn't begin to fathom why the thought left him with a strange sense of discomfort), but… she could feel something. And she understood.

He'd heard it in her voice when she'd explained the dance to him the day before. And he'd seen it in her silent tears tonight.

Jimmy glanced back at his desk, at the notebook waiting for him to express thoughts he couldn't begin to comprehend.

He looked back across the street, to the darkened room that held the one person who might be able to help him.

And she'd offered so many times, hadn't she? Jimmy realized a bit guiltily. She'd tried to help him, and he'd scoffed and turned away. No, worse than that — he'd insulted her. He'd mocked her accomplishments, he'd disdained the things she held important, and he'd inadvertently poured salt into wounds he'd been too self-involved to even realize she'd been nursing.

Why in God's name would she agree to help him now? If only he'd been just a little less arrogant, tried just a _little _to meet her halfway…

"Libby was right," Jimmy muttered to Goddard, flopping his head back against the pillows on his bed. "I am an idiot."

He shot Goddard a pointed look. "I swear, if you were recording that…"

The phone on his desk began to ring, breaking him out of his imminent bout of self-pity.

He glanced at the digital display, and his heart skipped a beat. It was confusing, but so many things seemed to be of late.

Jimmy quickly pressed the 'answer' button. "Hey," he said.

"Get a good look, Neutron?" Cindy's voice asked sarcastically.

"…huh?"

"You honestly think I couldn't see you over there? Geez, between this and your little tape measure stunt yesterday, you're really gunning for Creep of the Year, aren't you?"

Jimmy flushed crimson. "Well, you didn't exactly have your curtains closed, Vortex!"

"That doesn't mean you should have been _looking_!"

"It was an accident! I'm sorry, okay? I didn't see anything untoward. Promise."

Cindy huffed on the other end of the line, and he could picture her scowl.

"For what it's worth…" Jimmy took a deep breath. "You… looked…" He faltered for a moment. _Beautiful? Magnificent? _

"...you looked pretty okay," he said finally. He grimaced slightly to himself and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Goddard let out something between a sigh and a whine and stuck his head under the bed.

"No one asked you!" Jimmy hissed at him.

"…Neutron," Cindy began hesitantly, "…did you actually just _compliment _me?"

"Oh come on, Vortex, don't make me say it again. My vocal chords may not be able to stand the pain."

Cindy laughed, and Jimmy found himself smiling. "So, Cindy," he began carefully, "I'm, um, working on my paper revisions…"

"Oh, is the infallible genius _finally _going to admit that he can't do everything and ask for my help?"

"I wasn't going to ask for your help. _You _called _me_, remember?"

"…oh," Cindy said awkwardly.

Jimmy leaned against his window as Cindy's curtains opened and she appeared at her own window, her silhouette outlined by the shining moonlight.

"But I guess I can't stop you if you wanted to come over and make fun of me while I complete my revisions," Jimmy said.

Cindy raised an eyebrow at him and placed a hand on her hip.

Jimmy smirked at her. "One-time deal, Vortex. We go back to being enemies tomorrow."

Cindy didn't answer, pressing the phone against her neck and turning her eyes to the ceiling, features inscrutable.

"Cindy? You know, if you're pretending the call dropped, I _can _still see you."

"Give me a break, Neutron, I've had a hard day," she said.

"I'll make it better. Come on, we can order bad pizza and fire up the old Purple Flurp machine."

Cindy hesitated.

"Okay, _fine_," Jimmy sighed. "I'll allow you _three _cracks about the size of my head. But I _will _be keeping track and there'll be sanctions if you go over the allotted limit."

"Jimmy," Cindy's voice was very quiet.

He stared across the street at her, a strangely familiar warmth in his chest at the usage of his given name. "Yes?"

Cindy took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "…do you want me there?"

"…what?"

"It's a simple question: do you want me there or not?"

Jimmy stared at her from his window across the street. She opened her eyes to meet his.

He could have explained it to her logically. She got the highest grade in class. She clearly understood the aspects of the assignment that he couldn't grasp. He would essentially be utilizing her right-brain prowess to vault over her and regain his rightful academic supremacy, that was all.

But he was beginning to get the impression that logic didn't really apply — not here, not anymore.

He took a deep breath.

"Yes," he said finally. "Yes, I want you here."

Cindy smiled, and there was a light in her eyes that had been absent all day. The sudden swell of warmth in his chest continued, spreading outward, down his spine, down to his fingertips.

"I'll be there in five minutes," she said.

* * *

**CONTINUED IN CHAPTER FOUR, "SING THE BODY ELECTRIC" **


	4. Sing the Body Electric

_**A/N: **__Well, as I said in the intro to my one-shot "Melting Point," this chapter is a bit late. Of course, when I posted that, I was thinking a few weeks, not a few days. But yay productivity?_

_This chapter's title is, of course, a reference to Walt Whitman but more importantly to Jimmy's second poem in "Return of the Nanobots," which opens with the line "Cindy sings the body electric". Clearly there was no one with an English degree working for the censors, because, uh, yeah (and if you think my mind's just in the gutter… read the poem. Whitman was all about the physical). This is also the chapter where the T rating comes in. There's nothing too racy, but… well, you'll see. _

_Sadly, there'll only be one more chapter after this (though I'm entertaining the remote possibility of an epilogue), but we're definitely getting to the good part, so just sit back and enjoy the ride. _

* * *

**Roman de la Rivality**

**Chapter Four: "Sing the Body Electric"**

* * *

Jimmy stood in front of his computer, nervously adjusting the collar to his worn T-shirt in the darkened monitor's reflection. _Good enough, I guess_, he thought uncomfortably. _I mean… this girl's seen you ten feet tall in radiation-orange and with your molecules disassembled. Just this morning she saw you minutes after you'd caught fire and been hit in the face with 290 psi of water. She doesn't care what your T-shirt looks like._

He paused for a minute and looked pointedly at his reflection. "Plus," he forced himself to say out loud, "this is Cindy. _Cindy. _She doesn't care what you look like, and _you_ don't really care what she thinks about much of anything, including how you look."

Even his reflection seemed skeptical at his forceful statement, and Jimmy shook his head and sighed as he turned back to his attempts to straighten the lab into a space at least moderately acceptable for company. He'd already used Goddard's vacuum mode to remove the empty chip bags and half-flattened cans of soda he'd left scattered around from his last all-night research session, activated VOX's camouflage sequence to conceal his top-secret experiments at the back of the lab, and sorted his assorted lengths of wire into assorted piles of wire.

He'd even straightened the pillows on the curving sectional sofa he'd bought a few years back for the nights where his research stretched into the early morning hours and he found himself sleeping in the lab. Jimmy frowned when he noticed the slightly rumpled blanket still bunched up on one of the cushions — between that and the pillows… He hurriedly folded the blanket and stacked it neatly beside the pillows. _Don't want her to get the wrong idea or anything, _he thought awkwardly.

But that line of thought led him back to those last few furtive glimpses of Cindy in her bedroom window, all pale curves and inch after inch of her exposed skin being uncovered by the midnight-blue silk of her dress…

He blushed even darker as he shoved the pillows aside with a fraction more force than necessary.

"Looks good, huh, Goddard?" Jimmy asked brightly, patting the robotic dog on the head.

Goddard barked an affirmative before scrolling a question across his output screen.

"Well… I mean, it's not really _that _important to me if it looks good," he said, a bit defensively. "I just… you know, when you have guests you want it to… not that Cindy's really a guest, I mean, she's… well, she's kind of…" He paused, at a loss for words.

Goddard barked and rubbed his head against Jimmy's hand in a comforting motion.

"Thanks, boy," Jimmy said, scratching him behind one ear. "Let's just hope Cindy can help me with this damn paper. Nothing else has. And it should help her get her mind off the dance, so… that's good. For her. You know." He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

A flashing light and doorbell chime at his computer keyboard alerted him to a presence at his clubhouse door, and he felt his pulse quicken. _Just Cindy_, he repeated to himself. _Just. Cindy. _

He activated the surveillance feed, and the screen flickered to life to show Cindy's unmistakable form leaning against the clubhouse doorframe, arms crossed, features inscrutable as she stared across the yard. She was clad in a pair of simple black yoga pants and a Retroville Science Bowl T-shirt, her backpack at her feet.

"Goddard!" Jimmy called over his shoulder. "Sleep mode!"

Goddard barked in protest, staring at the screen.

"You can make all the misguided remarks you want _later_, okay? For now, _sleep._"

Goddard barked again before curling up on the cushioned dog bed in the corner, his eyes and circuits dimming as he entered his hibernation cycle.

Jimmy smiled at him. "Good boy," he said, turning back to the screen and willing his strangely-fast heartbeat to settle as he activated the audio feed. "Cindy?"

Cindy smiled slightly to herself as she glanced up at the lens of the security camera. "Hey, Neutron," she said, "are you going to let me in, or are you just going to keep me waiting out here and hold out for another illicit striptease?"

Jimmy flushed again. _This is becoming an extremely irritating habit_, he thought to himself. "Very cute, Vortex. Give me a second, I'll bring you down."

Cindy's eyes widened slightly. "'Bring me down'? Neutron, I swear to God, if you're going to—"

Her words turned into a sharp scream as she suddenly sound herself plummeting down through the secret entry chute into his lab.

Jimmy turned in his computer chair and offered her an apologetic smile and accompanying shrug as she landed in an awkward heap atop a large mattress. "At least there's a crash pad there now," he said helpfully.

"Ugh," Cindy groaned, rolling her shoulders experimentally. "I can't believe you still haven't just put in stairs like a _normal _person would."

Jimmy crossed the room and offered her his hand. "You'd think you'd be used to it after all these years."

Cindy stared up at him for a long moment before taking his hand, pulling herself to her feet. "Been a long time since you've let me in," she said quietly. She raised her eyes to meet his, their hands still clasped together.

Jimmy glanced from her eyes to their joined hands. _Since I've let her in_. He thought back to Ms. Birch's assignment, to his newfound revelation about his own lack of comprehension, to the stirring he'd felt when he'd seen her at her window.

There was a moment of uneasy silence between them before Cindy coughed, rather obviously, taking her hand from his and setting down her backpack. "I brought over my paper and my notes," she said. "Just in case you wanted a reference guide or something for your revisions. You know."

"Oh. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

They stood awkwardly for a moment, several feet apart, not looking at each other.

"So," Jimmy began hesitantly, "I don't know if you're hungry yet, but I'm, um, heating up some frozen pizza in the reactor oven in back. Should be done in about fifteen minutes."

Cindy raised an eyebrow at him. "Frozen pizza, huh?" she said. "You sure know how to treat a lady."

"Hey," Jimmy said, reaching out to tug the end of her ponytail, "I promised you bad pizza and that's exactly what you're getting."

"A man of your word, huh?" she smiled and batted his hand away.

"You know me, Vortex."

"Unfortunately," she said, thumping him on the shoulder. "Where do you want me to set up?"

He gestured over to his computer, where he'd set out his books and notes. "The couch is probably the most comfortable, but…"

"I'm taking your computer chair," Cindy said firmly, brushing past him and sitting down.

Jimmy narrowed his eyes slightly at her. "The couch _also _has space-age memory foam that allows for the highest degree of…"

"It's even better than I imagined," Cindy said, swiveling from side to side and smirking at him.

"And you'd have plenty of room to stretch out…"

"_Great _lumbar support," she continued.

"Okay, I'm drawing the line at my chair, Vortex," Jimmy said tightly. "Up. Now."

"I don't think so," Cindy said, leveling him with a matter-of-fact stare. "You want my help, I get the important chair. Not up for negotiation."

"I really think you'd be more comfortable on the couch…"

"I think _you'd _be more comfortable with me on the couch. _I _will be more comfortable and much more amused watching you sweat over the fact that there's a girl sitting in your Genius Throne." She smiled at him as he shuffled irritably over to the couch and sat down heavily, glaring at her.

"Get out your paper, Neutron," Cindy said. "We've got a long night ahead of us."

* * *

Cindy sat with her head in her hands, not speaking, Jimmy's paper resting on the arm of the computer chair.

"Did you finish reading?" Jimmy asked, balling up his pizza-stained napkin and tossing it onto the paper plate beside him.

"Oh yeah," Cindy said flatly. "I'm finished."

Jimmy raised an expectant eyebrow at her. "Well?"

Cindy dropped her hands into her lap and stared at him in exasperation. "_Well_?" she repeated incredulously.

"Well where do you think I should _start_, Vortex?" Jimmy sighed, leaning forward. "I think I have a better idea of the creative aspects of the project Ms. Birch wants us to incorporate, but I'll admit I'm not sure which section I should address first."

"Which section," Cindy repeated. She slid the paper into her lap. "Just out of curiosity, did you _read _this as you were writing it?"

Jimmy frowned at her disdainful tone. "Of course I did," he said. "Reading and editing as you write is a crucial skill in the creative process. Even _I _know that."

"Have you read it _recently_?"

"Right before you came over. Now would you like to stop acting like you just read your own death sentence and tell me what I can improve?"

Cindy turned a page and held up the paper for his inspection. "Allow me to read you an excerpt, since you apparently need me to refresh your memory."

She scanned the page briefly and began reading. "'One of the major elements to the medieval poetic style is a careful itemization of the beauty of the desired object, or _n_. In this the poets at hand derive a rather simplistic mode of solving for the degree of desired lightness in the eyes of _n _(our example shall of course utilize the standard universal notation of _c _for light), which may be written as follows…'" She stopped reading and stared at him, incredulous. "And you really turned this in, huh."

"Why wouldn't I? It's a brilliant synthesis of abstract literary principles into easily-digestible science. It's even written in basic terms — if not for the absence of the creative portion, it's an _obvious _A. This is science for the _layman_, Vortex. We're talking _mainstream publication_ worthy." He sighed and rested his head back against the couch, closing his eyes.

"'Moving to the consistent description of _n_'s neck as 'swanlike,' we find an obvious integration of classic trigonometry in the usage of a basic sine curve...' For God's sake, Neutron, _no one _can understand this!" Cindy threw the paper at him in exasperation and crossed her arms over her chest. "Sine curves? Trig? It's _poetry_, you idiot. The author is head over heels in love with some girl and he has to actually stop and write down all of the ways she's amazing because he loves her and, oh look, she fits into every single ideal in the book because _he loves her and that's all he can see_."

"If you would have _kept reading_ instead of throwing the paper at me, you would have _seen _where I consolidate all of the individual formulae regarding the poets' descriptions of beauty and extrapolate them to an overarching theorem regarding aesthetic perfection."

Cindy stared at him. "...you know," she said, "I'm really starting to think you didn't deserve an A-minus."

"Well, at least you understand," Jimmy sighed. "Now if only Ms. Birch could—"

"You _deserved_ an F."

"_What?"_

"Literature isn't… it's not something you can just dissect into a _formula_!"

"That's not true at all! There's a _reason_ some writing is called 'formulaic,' Vortex — like, I don't know, what Ms. Birch called my _paper_?"

"But 'formulaic' is an _insult_, you brainiac! Formulaic is for stupid romance novels and that sci-fi pulp trash Sheen reads! The stuff _we're_ studying hundreds of years later is supposed to be revolutionary — either it writes outside of a formula, or it _wrote_ the formula."

They glared at each other, not speaking for a long moment.

Finally, Cindy sighed and dropped her head into her hands again. "I don't understand, Neutron," she said. "Even you can't be this clueless when it comes to this stuff. Are you actively _trying _not to get it or something?"

"I'm _trying _to understand it as best I can, Vortex!" Jimmy said, raising his voice slightly in exasperation. "This is just… so outside my area of expertise. Everything in my world is concrete, no variations. But this is just _chaos_. And it's hard enough to understand without you lording it over me every two seconds that I don't."

Cindy sighed and leaned back in his computer chair. "All right," she said. "Maybe we need to change tactics. Start simple." She reached down to her backpack and pulled out her English textbook, flipping it open. "Here's what we're going to do – we're going to go over the poem from today's class. It has love, it has beauty, it has good poetic meter, and maybe the fact that we just discussed it this morning will help you get _something _out of it." She turned to the index and began searching for the right page.

"For Christ's sake, what do you think I'm going to understand from that poem now that I didn't get out of it in class, Vortex?"

Cindy leveled him with a sharp glare. "I don't know," she said, "how to talk to women? How to behave like a gentleman? How to look away from girls' open windows?"

"How many times do I have to apologize for that?"

"I don't know, is the current count less than or equal to three?"

"I even _complimented _you!"

"Oh, _right_," Cindy laughed humorlessly, flipping pages in her textbook. "What was it again?" She affected Jimmy's tone with scathing accuracy. "You looked, um, _pretty okay_. I _guess_. For a _girl_, ew." She rolled her eyes.

Jimmy scowled slightly at her uncomfortably accurate impression. "Well, it's not what I was _thinking_, okay?"

"You're a seventeen-year-old boy, are you allowed to say what you were thinking in polite company?"

"I don't know, go find me some and we'll find out."

Cindy glared at him and slammed her textbook shut. "Well, it's been about as much fun as usual, Neutron," she began, "but frankly I've had a bad enough day without you deciding to act like an ass again."

"…Cindy, wait."

She raised an eyebrow at him as she rose from the computer chair.

"…you looked… beautiful," Jimmy said finally, staring at his shoes in apparent fascination and attempting to ignore the burning flush spreading across his cheeks.

Cindy stared at him, slowly sinking back down into her seat. "…what did you say?"

"You… looked beautiful," he repeated. He closed his eyes and ran a hand awkwardly through his hair. "Honestly… when we were on the phone… I was trying to say it, but between you being mad at me for looking and me trying to understand this stupid assignment and just… the way you looked and…" He took a deep breath and forced himself to meet her gaze. "You looked beautiful. You really did."

Cindy slowly retrieved her textbook and settled it back into her lap, flipping it open. "Well… thank you," she said. "I know you're probably just saying that to shut me up and because of what happened with Reed and everything, but… thanks."

"You're welcome. And I swear I had no idea about… you know, Reed and/or everything when I said…" He gestured to his bruised cheek.

Cindy pulled the textbook a little closer to her. "Yeah," she said quietly. "…I'm really sorry about that," she said after a long moment. "Reed had only told me the night before, and you were just being so…"

"Yeah, I know," he smiled humorlessly. "I'm sure I deserved it on some level."

Cindy looked at him, and there was a hint of regret in her eyes. "You didn't deserve to have it bruise like that," she said quietly. She reached out slowly before drawing her hand back and biting her lip. "You know… I have some arnica gel at home. I use it after rough sparring matches sometimes — it's really good for bruises. I should have thought to bring it when I came over, but I was afraid that if I didn't move fast enough you'd decide that you didn't actually—" She glanced at him, blushing suddenly. "…anyway, I can… go home and get it now if you want."

His cheek still throbbed slightly, and anything potent enough to work on her karate injuries would have been likely been a welcome balm for the pain… but even though her house was just across the street, it suddenly seemed a long, lonely distance for her to travel.

And even though they'd somehow ended up fighting again, like they always did… he wasn't sure he was ready for her to go.

"I'll be okay," Jimmy said. "I could probably use another day or two of this bad boy smarting, anyway. Think of it as my punishment for not understanding how to be a gentleman."

"On paper or in practice," Cindy agreed, smirking and nudging his foot with hers.

"Hey, I'm _trying_ here," he laughed, nudging her foot back.

"Took you long enough," Cindy said, tapping his foot again. She stopped suddenly, staring down at their feet resting side by side, knees barely touching, and averted her gaze.

"…so, um, the poem we were reading in class today," Jimmy offered, feeling the increasingly-familiar heat of a blush rising to his cheeks.

"…huh?" Cindy asked, gripping her textbook a little too hard.

"The poem?" he asked again, reaching out to touch the page with one finger.

"…oh, right." Cindy glanced down, embarrassed. "I… don't know where my mind went there for a minute." She laughed just a little too loudly. "Okay, Christine de Pizan. Right." She cleared her throat. "'Ever blessed be the day…'"

Jimmy watched her as she began to read, the rounding of her lips, the careful concentration in her brow, the touch of her polished nails against the margin of the page. "Now, see," she said after she'd finished, "this is the ecstatic side of the whole idealization of love thing, where she's just so overwhelmed with love that she just has to talk about how happy she is. And that's what _all _of these poets are saying — they're so in love that they just have to shout it from the rooftops and write it down because it's almost too much for them to even process. Get it?"

"…in theory, yes," Jimmy said, frowning slightly. "But isn't that just the basic pheromone effect?"

Cindy sighed and rested her forehead in her hand. "Boys are so stupid," she muttered to herself. "_No_, brainiac. If it were just pheromones they'd be talking about how beautiful the object of their desire is and nothing else beyond that."

"But, to be fair, they do a _lot _of that. That's kind of the point."

"It's not the point! It's just a big part of it."

"It's pretty much the _only _point."

"It's just _symptomatic _of the 'only' point, how are you not getting that?"

Jimmy dropped his forehead into his palm, mirroring her. "Look, Cindy," he began, "I'm really not trying to be difficult here, but I just have no idea what point you're trying to make. You're insisting that it's not pheromones, it's not just a physical attraction, but that's _all _they're writing about: physical perfection. I don't understand how there's some extra level of truth or poetic beauty I'm supposed to be getting here when to my eye it looks like the poets are just talking about the same level of intimacy as your standard crush."

Cindy stared at him, not speaking for a long moment, before she sighed. "…I honestly can't believe I'm about to say this," she said, "but do you remember when we were kids, how you felt when Betty Quinlan was around?"

Jimmy tilted his head in his palm and stared at her. There was a faded note of pain in her voice at the name, as if she were remembering the angry girl she had once been who had hated Betty with every ounce of loathing she could muster – and considering it was Cindy, that was a lot of ounces.

Betty Quinlan. It'd been ages since he'd thought about her. She'd been relegated to the same negative space all thoughts of girls and interpersonal attachments had been exiled several years earlier, and even more easily forgotten since she'd graduated the year before.

But he could still remember the open longing he'd held for her in his younger days, the complete cessation of cognitive function when she was around, his desperate attempts to impress her.

Cindy smiled sadly at the look on his face. "I knew you'd remember," she said. "You had it _bad _for her. And… it was the type of thing the poets were talking about. Try to remember the way you… the way you felt when you looked at her. Like… like she was your whole world. Like she was the most beautiful person, the most beautiful _entity _on the planet. Like there was nothing else that existed, nothing else that mattered as long as she was around."

Jimmy looked at her, inscrutable. "You were around," he said quietly. "You were always around."

"You never noticed when she was," Cindy said softly.

_I'm noticing now_, he thought to himself, stopping the words at the tip of his tongue at the last possible moment. And, he realized with a start, he'd been noticing for a long time.

He noticed when she chewed on the end of her pen in class as she contemplated a difficult formula. He noticed when she walked beside Libby in the hallways, laughing at some trivial bit of gossip. He noticed when she ran during track practice, all graceful lines and surefooted speed. He noticed when she was upset. He noticed when she was proud.

He noticed _her_. Always.

She was such a deviation from the supposed romantic ideal, in every way. She was dressed so simply, her T-shirt faded, a small stain at the knee of her yoga pants, her hair tied up in a messy ponytail, and she looked just as lovely as she had in her dress for the dance.

And he noticed her. Noticed her then, noticed her now. And, he was beginning to realize, he'd noticed her for a long, long time. Even when he tried not to. Even when he was caught up in his own accomplishments. Cindy was always there, to argue with, to compete against, to compare to.

And tonight… to help him. Even though he'd insulted her and dragged her down just because of his own wounded pride. Even though she'd been rejected by her date for the dance – a boy that for all he knew she genuinely loved, was the source of the feelings she was using to explain courtly love to _him_.

He hadn't forced her to come. He hadn't threatened or taunted or mocked her.

He'd asked. Partly because he needed help. Partly because she and her literary talents were likely the only hope he had of ever completing a successful revision of Ms. Birch's assignment.

But also because of the question she'd asked, the question he hadn't even understood at first.

He wanted her to be there.

Because… there was nothing else when she was around. She was brilliant fire, inspiring him as she infuriated him, driving him to create and succeed in a way no one else ever had – or possibly could. They argued, yelled at each other, competed, gloated, insulted, made each other miserable more often than not… but he found himself stealing glances at her with alarming frequency. He thought about her constantly, even if it was just to think about how to next surpass her intellect. He'd only just begun to truly appreciate her beauty… but he'd appreciated _her _for years.

Jimmy stared at her, his blood running hot and cold, every cell in his brain and body seeming to come to a stop as he finally allowed the long-dormant realization to materialize.

…_I think I'm in love with her._

_Goddammit. _

"Jimmy?" Cindy asked hesitantly as he pressed his thumbs to his eyes as if in pain. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," he said in a tight voice. "Just attempting to calculate the probable square footage of hell and discerning the likelihood of an impromptu hockey game breaking out there right about now."

Cindy raised an eyebrow at him and leaned forward. "Seriously, Neutron, what's wrong? Too much time spent trying to understand human interactions for that big brain of yours to handle?"

Jimmy dropped his hands into his lap, staring at her wordlessly.

Cindy shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. "…Jimmy?" she asked.

"I think I understand it," he said quietly, reaching over to close the textbook in her lap.

Cindy smiled at him a bit uneasily and set the textbook aside. "Well, it definitely took you long enough. I've gotta say, I'm going to miss being the smartest kid in town again, but it'll be worth it not to have you wandering around school with that lost puppy look on your…" She trailed off as Jimmy reached out and took her hands in his. "…Neutron?" she asked, a bit fearfully. "What… are you doing?"

"I think I understand it now," he said, mostly to himself, staring down at their hands. "I wonder if they did."

Cindy laughed nervously, attempting to break the tension but keeping her hands in his. "Well, I mean, you have a guy like Petrarch who fell in love with a girl the first time he saw her and just wrote a bunch of sappy poems about her without ever actually telling her anything. But at least he didn't have a million headshots of her taped up around his lab." She shot him a lightly teasing smile, but his gaze was still intense and unwavering, and she shifted slightly in her chair.

Jimmy shook his head, attempting to clear his thoughts. "I can't believe I didn't understand it for so long," he said quietly. "It's so simple, really. Irritating, unfortunate, and probably unpleasant, all told, but simple."

"Neutron, you're acting even weirder than usual. What exactly are you—" Cindy's breath hitched as Jimmy raised one hand to rest lightly against her cheek.

_There's probably some kind of courtly love protocol for this, _he thought, staring into her fear-filled eyes. _I'm probably supposed to apologize or tell her she's been right all along or ask permission or bow or, well, __**something**__._

But really… it'd taken him long enough. And how many of the poets had died before they ever had the chance to tell the objects of their affection how they felt?

Jimmy may have been reminded quite thoroughly of late that he wasn't the completely infallible genius he'd always considered himself… but he was smarter than that.

He squeezed her hand and, closing his eyes, leaned in to press his lips very softly to hers. Cindy was completely still against him, her hand limp in his as he kissed her, gentle and slow, one hand curving against her cheek.

She still hadn't moved as he pulled back to observe her shocked expression.

He'd imagined anger, righteous indignation, shouts and screams and another bruised cheek to match the first… but not the open-mouthed shock currently frozen on her face.

"…sorry," Jimmy said awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his neck with the hand he'd held to her cheek, a gnawing disappointment beginning to swell in his chest.

Cindy was silent, still staring at him, eyes wide.

"I mean… I know it probably looks like I'm just taking advantage of your emotional vulnerability because of the dance… not that we were talking about the dance or anything… but you know what I mean, it's not…" Jimmy sighed, pulling his hand away from hers and dropping his head against it. "I know you're… you know, probably still hurting because of Reed, even though frankly he's an idiot for—"

"I wanted to go with you," Cindy said suddenly, and Jimmy looked up to see her holding one hand against her mouth, tears shining in her eyes. "You idiot, I wanted to go with you. I always wanted to go with you."

Unsure what to say, Jimmy reached over and carefully thumbed away a tear tracking down her cheek. "Just remember, I'm kind of bad at this," he said, moving his thumb over her cheekbone.

"You're terrible," Cindy agreed, reaching up to grasp his hand in hers and narrowing her eyes slightly at him. "Did you mean it?" she asked, so quietly he barely heard it.

He dropped his forehead against hers and nodded, imperceptibly. "And I'm trying to understand for my paper revisions, of course."

"Of course." Cindy laughed and squeezed his hand. "Well in that case," she said, blushing furiously, "you can… kiss me again now. For research purposes."

Jimmy stroked his thumb across the back of her hand and stared at her for a long moment. "I could do that," he said quietly. "But I think I—" He stopped, frowning slightly, before tugging on her hand. "Come here," he said, bringing her over to sit beside him on the couch.

He leaned her back slightly so she was lying against the cushions, and she started, gripping his forearms and staring up at him with an expression somewhere between anger and fear.

"Trust me?" Jimmy asked quietly, reaching out to brush a few errant strands of blond hair away from her face.

Cindy was trembling slightly against him, but after a long moment, she nodded.

He laid her back fully against the soft, worn cushions of the couch, not sure where to put his hands and settling for placing them on either side of her head, staring down at her. Her eyes were dark in the low light, cheeks flushed.

Moving to support his weight against his elbows, he reached out and smoothed his thumbs over her the curve of her eyebrows, moving over to her temples, then back to brush lightly over her eyelashes as she closed her eyes against his touch.

"What are you—?"

"Shh," Jimmy said, fanning his fingers out over her cheeks as his thumbs firmly stroked her cheekbones. "Research."

Cindy trembled against his touch as he continued, moving his hands lightly along the sloping curve of her neck – unquantifiable. Jimmy shifted at her sharp intake of breath as he stroked one thumb over her pulse point, noting her elevated heart rate. He pressed a calming kiss to her cheek, silently reassuring as he slid his hands back to gently hold her shoulders, sliding back against the wings of her shoulderblades and back to map the strong shelf of her collarbone.

Jimmy dropped his forehead to hers as she lifted into his touch. He lightly drew his fingers over her sternum, stopping as they met the seam of her bra under her thin T-shirt. Cindy was still shaking, but her widened eyes and soft breaths didn't seem to indicate fear.

He resisted the temptation to kiss her, and the even stronger temptation to slide his hands just a fraction lower, and moved them along the sides of her breasts, flushing at the brief, inadvertent brushing contact, and smoothed his palms over her ribcage, pulling her closer to him. From there it was a short journey to the delicious sloping indentation he'd caught the barest glimpses of when her T-shirt had ridden up just enough at track practice. It was a bit higher now, and the exposed skin under his fingertips was soft and warm, rising and falling erratically with the rhythm of her unsteady breaths.

"You okay?" Jimmy whispered as he curved his hands around her narrow hips, stroking his thumbs over the tops of her hipbones.

Cindy stared and him and nodded breathlessly, before hesitantly reaching up and running her own hands down the strong lines of his back.

Jimmy dropped his head against her neck at the sudden contact. It was such a simple motion – her fingers lightly traced the curve of his spine, the corded muscles strengthened from his work in the lab. She very hesitantly toyed with the hem of his T-shirt before slipping her fingertips beneath, stroking the skin just above his belt.

He wasn't sure how much of this was research at this point, if he was being honest. He was settled awkwardly between her knees, his hands gripping her hips over the thin material of her yoga pants, hers clutching at his shoulderblades, as he finally leaned down to kiss her again, slow and soft, catching her lower lip between his teeth. He wasn't even sure if she was trembling or he was or they both were, and he wasn't sure how something so physically draining could be so pleasurable, but there was one thing he was sure of as he leaned back just enough to look down at her, her eyes dark, cheeks flushed, lips moist and parted, breath short and sharp.

This was his aesthetic ideal.

And, he was rapidly becoming forced to admit, this was love.

"I think…" Cindy said as they slowly pulled apart, "I think you're finally understanding it."

"Well, I mean, it probably was inevitable," he smirked, brushing his lips across her forehead. "When do I not understand something for an extended period of time?"

"Oh, of _course_, forgive me for assuming that the great James Neutron could ever fail to understand something. You're so impossible."

"And you're insufferable."

They shared a smile as Jimmy cleared his throat and righted himself on the couch, subtly straightening his T-shirt. "So, um… as much as I hate it, I should probably get back to my paper revisions. You know."

A flash of disappointment crossed Cindy's face as she leaned back on her elbows, unconsciously pressing her fingers to her lips. "Yeah," she said awkwardly. "Um…. do you know what you need to do now?"

He stared at her for a moment, features inscrutable. "Yeah," he said, eyes never leaving hers. "I think I do."

* * *

**CONTINUED IN CHAPTER FIVE, "OF LOGIC AND STRANGE ETHEREALNESS"  
**


	5. Of Logic and Strange Etherealness

_**A/N**__: So the bad news: this chapter is very late. But the good news: it's not the last chapter, as was the original plan. In addition to being unwieldy, the last drafted chapter ended up containing way too many scenes and threads for one installment. I know the chapters of this puppy have been on the long side (this one's a bit shorter), but sometimes you've just got to go with your gut: something told me Chapter Three needed to be a cohesive whole, and something's telling me that Chapter Five needed a Chapter Six._

_I could be entirely wrong, of course, but I'll take that gamble. Hope you all enjoy the penultimate chapter regardless._

_(Literary references: This chapter's title comes from the common practice in medieval literature of anthropomorphizing intellectual concepts — in __**Roman de la Rose**__, for instance, you have characters like Beauty, Pity, Honesty, et cetera. Jimmy's characters are a little different, but then, as Cindy would tell you, so is he.) _

* * *

**Roman de la Rivality**

**Chapter Five: "Of Logic and Strange Etherealness"**

* * *

Jimmy's watch sounded a short series of beeps, and he cast his tired eyes down at the digital display.

"Midnight already, huh?" he groaned as he stretched his shoulders, long gone sore from his hunched posture over his computer keyboard. He stifled a yawn as he leaned back in his chair and scrolled through what he'd completed of his paper revisions thus far — they'd already ended up requiring far more extensive reworking than he'd initially thought (or, truthfully, had wanted to admit), but he'd made altogether decent headway for an evening's work, especially considering the sheer magnitude of the required revisions. He'd have a few more pages of draftwork to complete the following day, and then the unpleasant job of editing and polishing, but the seemingly-insurmountable task of comprehension had already been completed, and that was enough to set his mind at relative ease for the time being.

_Comprehension. _Jimmy swiveled in his chair to cast a glance at the unlikely source of said comprehension where she'd fallen asleep some time ago on the couch, and he forced himself to suppress the smile that pushed insistently at the corners of his lips. Okay, she wasn't awake to see it and add it to her already-plentiful teasing arsenal, but he still had his pride — and that pride was already confused enough by how often he seemed to be smiling over Cindy of late without him looking like some kind of dopey, lovesick idiot at every given opportunity.

Jimmy sighed, stretching his legs out in front of him and folding his arms over his chest. It was still so thoroughly unquantifiable, the strange shift that seemed to have occurred between them. After they'd finally pulled apart from their first awkward kisses, their mutual academic diligence had seen them begin working on their schoolwork in earnest. Cindy had relinquished her coup of his chair in favor of the comparative comfort of the couch, stretching out on her stomach and starting into her homework for the following week in her usual efficient manner.

Jimmy, for his part, had begun carefully examining his original paper for Ms. Birch's class, in search of any elements that might be salvaged and carried over into his revisions. Unfortunately, his long-perfected ability to focus seemed to have deserted him in favor of some lower function that was entirely too taken with the sight of Cindy's slender form just a few feet away, the feel of her sloping curves beneath his fingertips still lingering sweetly in his mind and muscle memory… but it was easier in the chair, at least, where he could always turn away from her before she got _too _distracting.

(He'd ended up making quite a few full rotations throughout the night, all told.)

While Cindy began solving a complicated set of organic chemical formulas for AP Chemistry, Jimmy had continued combing through his paper, silently taking in the notations, the diagrams, the carefully-executed argumentation and proofs. Everything concrete. Everything logical. And, for the first time, maddeningly useless.

After a long moment, Jimmy had sighed and, casting a glance back at Cindy, closed the document, calling up a fresh, blank page and staring dejectedly at the slowly-blinking cursor. "Page one," he muttered to himself, hauling up Cindy's literature textbook and flipping it open on the desk.

"…Jimmy?" Cindy had called hesitantly from the couch, and he'd raised an eyebrow at her as she sat up, staring at the computer screen. "Look," she sighed, "I know I was pretty harsh earlier, but I don't know if you really have to start from scratch. There's got to be _something_ you can use from your original paper — you had a pretty good understanding of some of the more technical poetic points, if nothing else."

"Nothing for it," he'd said, shaking his head. "As much as I hate to admit it, it appears that I was wro…" He'd swallowed hard, attempting to force out the word. "I was wro…"

Cindy had grinned, hugging her knees to her chest. "Take your time," she'd said. "It'll _so _be worth the wait."

Jimmy had scowled at her, leaning over to muss her hair with one hand and smiling lightly at her indignant cry of protest. "As I was saying," he'd said, "it appears that my initial hypothesis was incorrect, which, of course, led to the failure of the experiment as a whole. It's always a shame to have to discard an experiment entirely, but, well, sometimes you just have to re-evaluate your methodology and start from the beginning."

"I'm just glad I don't have to turn in any revisions," Cindy had flipped her notebook closed with a sigh. "This chem homework's tough enough without having to worry about Ms. Birch's class this weekend, too."

"What did you write about for your paper, anyway? You never told me."

"More accurately, you never asked," Cindy had said simply, shrugging. "I wrote about the symbolism of Jean de Meun's _Roman de la Rose _and how it dovetailed with the sexualization of American culture. Trust me, the selections we read in class were _way _cleaned up in translation. You should see the original Middle French."

"You can read Middle French?"

Cindy had smiled at him. "Of course. It's not all that hard, actually, it mostly just looks like everything's spelled really weird. If you know modern French, it's pretty easy. Anyway, I looked at the linguistics of the original text and compared it to depictions of sexuality in modern American culture."

"That's all you did?" Jimmy had sighed, leaning his head back against his chair. "If I'd known it was that easy, I would have gone with the pop culture route in the first place. And that was really worth an A?"

Cindy had pinned him with a withering glare, and he knew immediately that he'd managed to say exactly the wrong thing. Again.

"You know what? It was. It really was. I worked really hard on that paper, Neutron," she'd said, resting her elbows against her knees, still glaring at him. "Not only did I have to read a ton of scholarly articles _in French_, some of them a couple of centuries old, but I probably lost about thirty braincells from all the hours of MTV I had to watch for the modern culture section. I started working on it the day after Ms. Birch assigned it, and I didn't stop editing it until the night before we had to turn it in. I _earned _that A. Period."

"Sorry," Jimmy had said awkwardly, slouching down slightly in his chair. "I didn't realize it was that important to you."

Cindy's glare had slowly faded, her features becoming closed off and inscrutable. She dropped her head against her knees. "You never realize," she'd said, and there was a note of an old but still-raw pain in her voice. "You've always been the smart one. In _everything_. I can work my fingers to the bone in chemistry and physics and no matter what I do, I'll _always _come in second. You have no idea how it feels to give everything you have and always lose to someone who doesn't even have to _try_."

She looked at him. "But English class is _mine_. I can understand poetry, I can write, I can read literature in Middle French, and you can't. I can do something that you _can't._ And as long as that left-brain of yours is so dominant that it's a miracle you don't tip to one side when you walk, I'll always have a chance. So yeah, it's important. It's important because I'm good at it, and sometimes, every rare once in awhile, I actually get to be the best." She wrapped her arms around her knees, eyes stormy. "You've never understood how much that matters to me."

Jimmy had fallen silent at her pained, brutally honest speech. He'd always known that it must have been unpleasant for her to continually come in second place, of course… but that's just how things _were_. He'd always been rather pleased by the arrangement, truth be told, and a large part of him had thought that she was motivated by it, if nothing else. The two of them thrived on competition, on attempting to better one another in everything they attempted.

But at the open pain flashing across Cindy's face, Jimmy had mentally reversed their positions, imagined himself always sitting in the audience, always off to the side as Cindy was presented with award after award, countless honors and accolades raining down on her from all avenues, his own efforts unnoticed, dismissed, neglected in favor of hers. The sudden imagined frustration and crippling self-doubt rising within him seemed all-too real. Thriving on competition was one thing, but one needed at least a few victories here and there for the barest nourishment. He'd been starving Cindy of that for years, he realized, and he suddenly understood her antagonistic nature just a bit more thoroughly.

Jimmy had wordlessly reached forward, disengaging her arms from around her knees, and pulled her into a tight hug, feeling the tell-tale warmth of a blush spreading across his cheeks. As much as he had to admit that he enjoyed this acceptable new closeness, there was still an element of embarrassment to it that was taking its sweet time in fading.

_You're better at a lot of things, Cindy, _Jimmy had thought to himself, dropping his head to her shoulder. _This, for instance._

But Cindy hadn't returned his hug, merely allowed herself to be held in his embrace with her arms limply at her sides. "What are you doing?" she'd asked flatly.

"It's a hug. I'm hugging you. _Je… t'embrasse_, is that it?"

Cindy had rolled her eyes and turned her head against his shoulder. "'_Embrasser_' is 'to kiss,' you idiot. There's no real easy French verb for 'to hug'."

"How can a language not have a hug verb? That's weird."

"Oh come on, you must have known that. You know everything, as you take great pains to announce at every given opportunity."

"Nope," he'd smiled lightly at her and tugged at a strand of her hair. "I did not know that."

She'd turned her face towards his enough that he could see the small smile tilting at her lips. "Any chance you can get VOX to give me a recording of you saying that? I want to put it on my iPod and just listen to on repeat at night when I—" She trailed off as he moved in and kissed her quickly.

"_Je t'embrasse_?" Jimmy had asked with a rakish grin.

Cindy had pushed his face away, attempting to hide her own smile. "_'Je t'ai embrassé_,'," she said, pulling out of his embrace and returning to a lounging position on the couch, flipping her notebook back open. "Past tense."

"See? Something else I didn't know. Good thing I have you around," Jimmy had said, and the hardness in Cindy's eyes had faded into a warm look that he'd held with his own before blushing and turning back to his computer, willing his quickened heartbeat to settle as he returned to his paper revisions.

It was a surprisingly pleasant evening, despite that minor contretemps — they'd eventually settled into an easy, companionable silence, punctuated only by the clicking of keys and the soft, muted hum of machinery. Jimmy would occasionally ask Cindy to clarify a point made by a particular author; Cindy would ask him to double-check the answer she'd derived for one of her data sets. It was as if all of the thick, omnipresent tension that had long ago settled between them had finally begun to burn away, leaving behind this strange, easy companionship that was… well, whatever it was.

It was almost beyond even Jimmy's staggering cognitive faculties to continue to parse _that _particular quandary, at least so soon after it'd appeared. It'd been miraculous enough that he'd finally begun to understand the seemingly-inscrutable concepts of love and beauty enough to begin revising his paper for Ms. Birch's class — trying to understand the new, fragile closeness that seemed to have blossomed between him and Cindy was far more than he was prepared to undertake at the same time.

But maybe it was simpler than he was accounting for — everything else had been, in the end. Jimmy tipped his head to one side as Cindy snuffled slightly in her sleep and turned more firmly onto her side.

She was still very much the girl he'd always known, he thought, watching as she settled back into fitful sleep. She was loud and awkward and prickly… she _was _Cindy Vortex, after all, even if she was the girl he almost kind of actually quite really liked-loved…

But he'd kissed her, and she'd kissed him back, and…

_I wanted to go with you. You idiot, I wanted to go with you. _

She obviously felt _something_... and Cindy feeling something for him that didn't fall under the subheading of Hatred and/or Revulsion was still a strange, frightening prospect. This just wasn't how things were ostensibly _supposed_ to be, at all — he was Jimmy and she was Cindy and they were oil and water, repelling poles, built of fire and crackling tension and an overwhelming mutual distaste. They weren't really even friends, let alone… well, whatever they might have become. Whatever kisses and a belated invitation to a high school dance qualified them for.

_The dance._ Jimmy closed his eyes and rested his head back against his chair. Well, he supposed he was lucky that things had played out the way they had, as unpleasant as they'd been for Cindy. It would have been an awkward enough evening with his dancing ability, such as it was, but then they'd have had to explain to their undoubtedly-stunned classmates that yes, they were in fact Jimmy and Cindy, yes, they were there together, no, their minds had not been liquefied and replaced by some kind of sentient alien brain slugs, and yes, they _were _going to dance together and he was going to thoroughly enjoy the sight of Cindy in her midnight-blue dress, all sloping curves and bared skin below a sweet smile…

Jimmy's watch beeped again, interrupting his thoughts, and he frowned at it, then at Cindy's sleeping form. 12:15. True, it _was_ the weekend, but he didn't imagine that Cindy's parents would be particularly thrilled about her being at a boy's house until all hours no matter what day it was.

He almost hated to wake her when she looked so peaceful, one hand tucked under her head, the other curled up protectively against her chest, rising and falling with her deep, even breaths. His grandmother's crocheted throw lay draped over her legs, trailing onto the floor. Cindy looked so vulnerable in sleep, so unlike her waking self, and he felt a swell of increasingly-familiar warmth and affection at the sight of her.

_Increasingly-familiar __**and**__ thoroughly bizarre_, Jimmy thought to himself, sighing slightly. It was completely illogical and anomalous in every conceivable context… but that, he'd learned of late, was apparently how love functioned. And love seemed to exist in the same strange, ethereal space where logic and concrete principles feared to tread.

Logic said that he was supposed to hate the peacefully-sleeping girl before him. She was Rival, Foe, Irritant, everything contrary and negative contained and concentrated.

Strange Etherealness said she was beautiful and smart and smelled nice and was warm and soft and very, very pleasant to kiss.

And Logic had gotten him an A-minus on this one, so it could just go sit in the corner and think about what it had done as far as he was concerned.

"Cindy. Hey," Jimmy said softly, reaching out one hand to brush a few errant strands of hair away from her face. "Time to wake up."

Her eyelids fluttered slightly, but she didn't stir.

"Cindy. Come on now." He lightly grasped one of her shoulders and gave her a gentle but firm shake.

"Mmph," Cindy mumbled, curling in on herself more tightly.

Jimmy sighed and smirked at her. "Okay, if that's how you want to play it, Sleeping Beauty…" He flushed slightly as he leaned down to press a soft, gentle kiss to her lips. They were soft and warm against his, and even though he could still count on one hand the number of times he'd kissed Cindy, his meager scientific observations had already placed the experience very firmly under the "extremely pleasant, would do again" heading.

Cindy shifted under him, and he moved to curve his hand against her cheek. He closed his eyes as he felt her arm shift, starting up towards his face.

And what was shaping up to be a lovely, romantic moment quickly ended when Cindy brought one balled fist up to sharply connect with his mouth, driving his teeth against the inside of his lower lip.

Jimmy yelped in pain, pulling away from her. He thumbed his lower lip gingerly, frowning when it came away with a slight smear of red.

"Jimmy!" Cindy yelled, rolling off the couch, her legs tangled in the throw blanket. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Well, right _now_ I'm trying not to die of blood loss," he groused, rummaging around by his desk and retrieving a box of tissues, pressing one sheet to his lip and glaring at Cindy. "You know, Vortex, I know we've been fighting each other since we were kids, but I think my face has taken enough punishment for awhile, don't you?"

"Oh, come on, I was dead asleep until about twenty seconds ago, how hard could I have hit you?" Cindy rolled her eyes and stifled a yawn with one hand as she stood. "Now come here and let me see." She took the tissue from his hand and reached up to carefully tug at his lip, examining the reddened flesh. "You are such a baby — you're barely even bleeding."

"But I _am _bleeding," he said pointed out irritably.

"_Barely_."

"The skin of the _labia oris _is some of the thinnest on the human body, Vortex, and even the most minor laceration can cause arterial damage, not to mention the pain incurred from trauma to the mental nerve that can radiate to the—" He trailed off as Cindy leaned forward to very gently kiss his injured lip, her cheeks reddening as she pulled away.

"So I guess that's your way of saying you're sorry?" Jimmy asked rhetorically, feeling the familiar warmth of a blush spreading across his own features.

Cindy shrugged. "Mostly it was my way of getting you to shut up before you launched into a lecture that probably would have been enough to qualify me for a biology degree by the end of it."

"Well," Jimmy said, rubbing at the back of his neck and smiling awkwardly at her, "I've gotta say it's… well, it's a lot nicer than the old ways."

Cindy stared at him for a moment before dropping her head against her chest, not quickly enough to conceal the pleased smile turning up at the corners of her lips. "So what were you doing, anyway?"

"Oh," Jimmy said awkwardly, leaning back against his desk. "I was… just trying to wake you. You know."

"Oh," Cindy said, gathering up the fallen blanket and carefully folding the ends together. "You could have just shaken me or something. I'm a pretty light sleeper."

"Tried that. Tried calling your name, too. But, I mean…" Jimmy quirked a hesitant half-smile and leaned back against his desk. "I mean… you just looked… really pretty and peaceful and I just… figured I'd try to be romantic?" He sighed a little, running one hand through his hair. "Doesn't look like I'm particularly good at it."

Cindy was quiet for a moment, absently toying with the hem of her T-shirt, inadvertently exposing a thin strip of skin that he found quite distracting. "I mean, it was an honest mistake," she said finally. "Most girls would have thought that was pretty much the sweetest and most romantic thing ever."

"…really?"

"Well, yeah. But most girls don't have my karate reflexes, so…" She spread her arms out demonstratively and shrugged. "Here we are."

Jimmy frowned and thrust his hands into his pockets, shoulders hunched. "I guess I'm never going to get it, am I," he said, a bit despondently.

He started when Cindy came up beside him, leaning up on her tiptoes and blushing just a fraction as she kissed his cheek. "You're getting better," she said. "Yesterday that would have sent you screaming into the safety shower to be decontaminated."

"You were asleep for awhile, Vortex, for all you know I spent the entire time in there scrubbing all of your girl germs off me."

"Light sleeper, remember? I doubt I would have slept through you weeping openly and screaming 'UNCLEAN' at the top of your lungs." She smiled and lightly punched him in the shoulder.

"Have you ever heard the safety shower when it's on? That thing is _loud_. I could've sung the entire score to _H.M.S. Pinafore _and all you would have heard was rushing water."

"I'll have you know that my Neutron Misery senses are extremely acute. Besides, _my _misery would have been off the charts if you'd actually tried singing Gilbert and Sullivan."

"I don't think even I could be _that _cruel," Jimmy smiled slightly at her. "Anyway… it's past midnight. Your parents'll probably be worrying about you, won't they?"

"My parents wouldn't worry about me unless I was on fire, Neutron."

"Well, I haven't isolated all of the circuits fried by the Poetry Analyzer, so you've still got a decent chance of it the longer you hang around here."

"There's always the safety shower. I hear it's even equipped for extremely off-key operettas these days. Does it have to be Gilbert and Sullivan? Can I do _The Pirates of Penzance _instead of _H.M.S. Pinafore_?"

"As long as I don't have to hear it, sure."

Cindy laughed lightly to herself and stretched her arms over her head. "Ah, terrible pizza, injuries, and fire hazards. You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Neutron."

"In fairness, _I _was the one who got injured. Are you sorry you came?"

She looked up at him, a small smile alighting on her face.

"No," she said. "Are you?"

Jimmy took her hand in his, blushing slightly. "No," he said. "But I still think you should probably head home."

"Already bored with me, huh," Cindy said in an attempt at a teasing tone, but there was a doubting hesitance beneath the words that she barely attempted to conceal.

Jimmy began massaging her fingers. "Look," he admitted, "I don't particularly want you to go…" He narrowed his eyes slightly at her triumphant grin. "No gloating, Vortex, I think we're way past that here."

"Wouldn't really be us if we were past it entirely," Cindy pointed out, smirking at him.

"Well, that's true, anyway," Jimmy acknowledged. "But… I mean… in addition to the fire risk, won't your parents be worried about… you know…"

"'You know'?" Cindy repeated, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Yeah, I mean… well… you know," Jimmy repeated lamely, blushing and tightening his grip on her fingers.

"What do you mean?" Cindy asked, tilting her head, eyes widened slightly.

Jimmy sighed, dropping her hand to run his through his hair in frustration. "I mean… we _are _teenagers, and I'm a boy and you're…" _Irresistible, _a small part of his mind supplied before being told emphatically by the rest of it to shut up. "…a girl," he continued, "and with the… likely abundance of pubescent hormonal activity coupled with this… strange chemical attraction that seems to have… and that's not even mentioning the, um, high degree of development of your secondary sex characteristics…" at least he didn't have to worry about his lip bleeding anymore, he doubted there was any blood left unallotted for it to use, "…a parent could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that you and I were… engaged in… relations of a… a…"

His awkward, stammering explanation was interrupted by Cindy's hysterical, full-bellied laughter.

"Oh my _God_, Neutron," she managed to gasp, clutching at her stomach as she continued to laugh herself hoarse. "You are just _priceless_."

Jimmy stared at her. "It's not really _that _funny, Vortex," he said. "Well… I mean I've heard stories about how it _could _be, but…"

"I'm laughing at _you_, you idiot!" Cindy said, her full-throated laughter beginning to subside to mirthful giggles. "You seriously thought I didn't know what you meant? Only you could _ever_ be that clueless!"

Jimmy flushed slightly and rubbed the back of his neck. "Well," he began awkwardly. "…I mean… there was a _slight _chance…" He sighed and dropped his forehead against his palm. "…that I'm a complete idiot," he finished.

"Oh, _way_ more than a chance," Cindy laughed, pulling his hand away from his forehead and holding it in hers. "Lucky for you you're kind of cute when you're stupid."

"You just like seeing me screw up."

"Of course," she grinned at him. "But it's very sweet of you to be worried about my reputation."

"Is it?"

"It is," Cindy said simply, patting his cheek. "See? You're not completely hopeless. Maybe a good ninety percent, but not completely." She reached around him to retrieve her literature textbook from his desk. "Do you still need this, or is it okay if I take it home with me?"

"I'm good. Mine's upstairs. I think I've got the basic structure of my revised arguments down, anyway — I don't anticipate needing to look at the texts too often outside of supplementary documentation."

"You made some good progress tonight, then?" she asked, gathering up her books and carefully slotting them into her backpack.

"Very much so," Jimmy said, leaning back against his desk. His features grew solemn for a brief moment. "…Cindy," he said.

She looked up from arranging her books and raised an eyebrow at him.

He took a deep breath. "Thank you," he said. "Truly."

A slow smile stretched across Cindy's lips, and she hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders. "You're welcome," she said. "...thanks for asking me over. I thought… with Reed and the dance and everything…" She fiddled with the straps of her backpack avoiding his gaze. "I had a really great time tonight," she said finally.

Jimmy reached a hand out and smoothed her hair away from her face. "Me too," he said quietly.

They remained that way for a long moment, awkwardly regarding each other, before Cindy shifted subtly away from him.

"So," she said, glancing back toward the exit tube from the lab.

"…so," Jimmy repeated, thrusting his hands into his pockets.

Cindy offered him a small smile. "…see you in school on Monday?"

Jimmy smiled back at her and leaned down to impulsively kiss her on the cheek. "Wouldn't miss it," he said.

Cindy giggled, then blushed fiercely, as if realizing that she was a) Cindy Vortex, b) Cindy Vortex _giggling_, and c) Cindy Vortex giggling over _him_, and attempted to school her features into a more nonchalant expression, succeeding only in looking like someone desperately trying to suppress an exceedingly-pleased smile.

"So, um… good luck with the rest of your revisions," Cindy said as she made her way to the exit, waving lightly at him. "Call me if you need me, okay?"

"Will do," Jimmy said, returning the wave. "'Til Monday."

"Monday," she repeated, nodding. She tried to keep the scarcely-contained elated grin off her face until after the exit tube had returned her to the surface, but Jimmy caught it just the same. It could have been a point for future gloating if he hadn't been sure that his own expression perfectly mirrored hers.

Wordlessly, Jimmy walked back to his desk and sat down heavily in his chair. VOX's readings confirmed that Cindy had made it successfully out of the lab, and he watched her linger for just a moment at the clubhouse door, wrapping her arms around herself, before she shook her head and started across the yard and toward her house.

He glanced at Goddard, still asleep in his corner, and momentarily considered waking him before settling for dropping his head against his keyboard and attempting to slow his quickly-tumbling thoughts.

Logic was fairly beside itself with confusion and disbelief over the night's events. _Let me understand, _it was saying. _In order to obtain a perfect grade in a __**humanities **__class, you've completely jettisoned any semblance of pride and dignity you possessed and somehow managed to fall in love with the one person who's made your life as difficult as possible for the past seven years. _

Strange Etherealness was entirely unconcerned — in fact, it almost seemed content. _You're thinking far too narrowly_, it said. _It's not the type of thing you can understand. It just is._

_**Everything**__ can be understood, _Logic fumed. _Everything has a solution, everything in its place. This is how our world functions. _

_ Maybe your world's too limited, _Strange Etherealness observed calmly. _Maybe he needs more to be whole._

_ Oh, shut up, new kid. _

Jimmy's watch beeped again, temporarily hushing the warring factions in his mind, Logic begrudgingly returning to its corner of banishment. _Monday._ He glanced at the digital calendar display on his computer screen. Monday. The fourteenth.

Valentine's Day. Of course.

Jimmy straightened the notes he'd haphazardly scattered across his desk, frowning slightly. Would Cindy be expecting him to do… well, _something_? Were they… well, whatever would necessitate some grand, romantic Valentine's Day gesture? Or any kind of gesture, really?

He remembered how he'd pitied whatever boy had been taking her to the dance (a boy he'd now dearly love to see encased in carbonite for a length of time, or hypnotized into believing he was a lizard of some kind, or any manner of unpleasant, pettily vengeful things) — Cindy was a princess type through-and-through, and she'd likely settle for nothing less than the demonstration of every single aspect of the medieval romantic ideal. He'd probably have to find himself some obscure foreign fiefdom with lax policies on handing out knighthoods sometime in the next thirty-six hours.

Jimmy sighed and massaged his temples, staring at his computer screen, at the drafted sentences for his paper revisions. Love. Beauty. Chivalry.

He glanced at his notes, to a printed handout of an illuminated manuscript Ms. Birch had given them the previous week — it was a beautifully-illustrated court scene, an armored knight on gallant horseback handing a rose to a resplendent lady, her handkerchief tied around his neck.

_A lady's favor_, Jimmy thought to himself. He cast an appraising glance around the lab, eyes alighting on a row of darkened, unassuming machines towards the back of the room, and a slow smile spread across his face.

He glanced down at his watch. 12:30. Cindy would certainly be home by now, and with the nap she'd taken, he doubted she'd have gone right to bed.

"VOX," he said, turning back to his computer. "Dial Cindy's cellphone." The number flashed across the screen as the system dialed.

Logic chose that moment to furiously reappear, blazing with anger._ Nothing you do will __**ever **__be good enough to make that girl happy, and you know it,_ it said. _You could bring her the moon and she'd complain that you didn't fetch the stars as well. Of all the girls in the world, this is the one you've chosen. Of __**all **__the girls. Why are you __**doing **__this?_

Strange Etherealness shoved Logic aside gently, shrugging as it did so. _No idea_, it responded, voice calm and steady. _But this is right. And so is she. _

"Miss me already?" Cindy's bemused voice echoed through the lab.

Jimmy smiled slightly to himself. "So, um, you're definitely going to be at school on Monday, right?"

Cindy paused. "…yeah," she said, clear curiosity in her tone. "I just said I'd see you there like five minutes ago. Why?"

"Make sure you get there early. And meet me at the lab after school." Gathering his courage, he took a deep breath. "And bring your dress."

"What are you—" He pressed a button on his keyboard, ending the call and her curious questions. She'd just have to find out on Monday.

Jimmy grinned wryly at his paper revisions. "Looks like you'll have to wait a little longer," he said, saving the document and closing down the word processing software. "Goddard, wake mode!"

The robotic dog's circuits slowly flickered to life, and Goddard bounded over to him happily.

"We've got work to do, boy," Jimmy said, kneeling down and scratching him under his metallic chin. "I'll explain as we go."

He stood and walked over to his workbench, his heart beating fit to burst from his chest as he began collecting various implements.

He was absolutely terrified.

And, he was beginning to realize, that seemed somehow right, too.

* * *

**CONCLUDED IN CHAPTER SIX, "IN LINGUA VERITAS"**


	6. In Lingua Veritas

_**A/N: **__Things that have happened in the past month that made this chapter super-late: 1) got a new job, 2) took up archery, 3) had to have my left arm in a sling for over a week because of #2 (arm guards are very, very important, kids), 4) adopted a pair of nine-week-old kittens that think my attempts to sleep at night are just adorable. So the kind-of-not-really-grand finale of RdlR is rather belated. Hopefully it's worth the wait. It is, if nothing else, very, VERY long. _

_I can't thank all of you enough for sticking with me through this story — it'd literally been nearly a decade since I'd attempted a multichaptered work when I started into it, and I thoroughly enjoyed every single minute of writing it. I hope you've all enjoyed it with me. As an aside, today is actually my birthday, so consider this my gift to all of you._

_And now, without further ado, onto the finale! _

_(Note: the title of this chapter is [bad] Latin for "in language there is truth". Like Cindy, I'm way better at Middle French.) _

* * *

**Roman de la Rivality**

**Chapter Six: "In Lingua Veritas"**

* * *

Monday morning dawned bright and cold, a brilliant winter sun rising over a dusty-pink sky. There was a brisk, pleasant chill to the air, and the sidewalks shone silver-white with a thick coat of morning frost. It was almost as though the essence of a perfect midwinter morning had been distilled and delivered, the landscape awash in pinks, golds, and silvers, a softly-romantic sunrise in deference to mankind's designated day of romance.

Jimmy, for his part, was completely oblivious to this, and to everything outside, and, at this point owing rather handsomely to a severe case of sleep deprivation, to what a sunrise even _was _anymore — that morning a flaming portal to hell could have opened up in his front yard, and he still would have been up to his elbows in wires and gears in the lab, with only the barest passing thought given to the sudden spike in temperature and sounds of wailing and gnashing teeth outside.

Down in the heart of said lab, Jimmy furrowed his brow and pressed a hand to his chin as he examined the tangle of written code on his computer screen, typing in a string of commands and glancing back at his towering matter substantiator. He'd rolled his T-shirt sleeves up onto his shoulders some time ago, his biceps smudged with soot and grease, his hair sweaty and disheveled. "Have to get this finished," he mumbled to himself, lightly pinching the back of one hand and attempting to keep his increasingly-heavy eyes from falling shut.

Jimmy was in no way a novice at the general methodology in which he was currently engrossed — he'd conducted any number of scientific research marathons over the years, and he usually took a kind of accomplished pride in his resulting exhaustion, in the countless hours spent researching and experimenting and tinkering and recording brilliant new observations until he finally collapsed onto the nearby couch, often with lab coat and goggles still in place.

But this… this was different. Those experiments had been just for his own pleasure.

This… this was for her.

Jimmy shook his head a little as he retrieved a sheet of graph paper from his desk and scribbled down a series of prompts, examining the construction of the programmed code with a practiced eye. Even after the lessons of courtly love had finally taken hold, Logic banished grumbling and irritable into the far recesses of his brain, it was still far beyond his comprehension that he even _had _a 'her,' and miles past even that when accounting for the identity of the 'her' both objectively and in relation to himself. But it seemed almost immaterial now that he'd been able to channel that confusion into science and mechanics, where he could subjugate the pronoun trouble of _her _and _him _and the very real possibility that there was now a _them _into something familiar, into lines of code and electrical engineering instead of evocative poetry and warm, lingering glances that seemed to wring his breath from his lungs, somehow painful and pleasant all at once.

It had been terrifying, at first, having to admit to himself that he was actually planning a grand romantic gesture, that said romantic gesture was intended for _Cindy Vortex_, and that he wanted, _needed _it to be absolutely perfect, breathtaking, the kind of thing that would immediately render all the poetry they'd examined in Ms. Birch's class quaint and obsolete in the face of it. For the past two days, Jimmy's world had been entirely contained within his workbench, the busily-whirring machines in his lab, and the memory of Cindy's soft, hesitant smile and her lips against his driving him to work harder, faster, to perfect and refine the pinnacle of courtly romance in a way that only someone with his astounding intellect ever could.

Or, well… that had been the plan, anyway.

"Goddard!" Jimmy called toward the back of the lab. "You've got the compiler running at full capacity, right?"

An affirmative bark echoed from behind a group of imposing machines, their metal cases glinting in the harsh fluorescent light, the sounds of grinding gears and electronic humming emanating from within them.

"Finally," Jimmy sighed, turning back to his computer and running a hand through his hair, grimacing slightly at the feel of dirt and grime against his skin. "I think we may be back on track here."

It'd taken a surprisingly short amount of time for him to formulate the initial plans for what he'd rather unimaginatively dubbed Operation Courtly Love, especially considering how long it had taken him to finally understand the named concept. After days of stubborn pushback and willful blindness, his research for his paper revisions (and Cindy's unexpected help therewith) had granted him at least a cursory grasp on what commonly constituted "love" in popular understanding. Flowers and chocolate would have certainly been enough to meet the standard listed romantic quotient for Valentine's Day, but why stop there when there were countless other traditional romantic symbols he could incorporate into his master plan?

Jimmy stretched his arms over his head and rose from his computer chair, casting an appraising eye over the various machines hard at work around the lab. Goddard was examining the compiler as it constructed the finest synthetic Belgian-style chocolates, carefully wrapping them in thin sheets of real gold. The Insta-Grow machine had already turned out dozens of perfectly-formed long-stemmed roses, their petals at peak bloom and free of any discoloration. A swell of soft classical music rose from the far corner, where the holographic string quartet he'd spent the better part of Saturday evening programming began to tune up.

"Make sure you start with Vivaldi, okay, guys?" Jimmy called to them. "He's Cindy's favorite. Or, well, he was at one point, I'm not sure about now. …tell you what, just run with it, and if she starts rolling her eyes or trying to hit you over the head with your bows, switch to Mozart and see what happens."

The cellist raised a holographic eyebrow at Jimmy before shrugging and giving him a thumbs up.

Jimmy allowed himself a pleased smile as he continued his inspection, features turning serious as they settled on the dressmaker's dummy he'd borrowed from his mother. "I'm taking a gamble with this one, huh, Goddard," he said, half to himself, reaching out to stroke his fingers over the shining metal plates.

Goddard barked, trotting over to Jimmy's side and nudging at his hand in a comforting gesture.

"It's just…" Jimmy sighed and leaned down to scratch Goddard behind one ear. "None of this would have happened if Ms. Birch hadn't given us that stupid assignment, and we've both been so inundated by all of this medieval courtly love stuff… I don't know." He frowned slightly at the dummy. "I mean… the last thing I want to do is embarrass her and have her yell at me or hit me or whatever disproportionate punishment she'd probably dole out for my not handling Valentine's Day to her _lofty _expectations."

Goddard whined and nuzzled his hand, offering up a short bark of encouragement.

"Well _I _know she's lucky to have me doing all of this for her, but this _is _Cindy we're talking about. If the slightest thing goes wrong, _I'll _be lucky if she doesn't…"

Goddard barked sternly at him.

"I am not being unfair to her! It's just…" He sighed and fell back into his computer chair, resting his head back and staring up at the ceiling. "I care about her, Goddard," he said finally, steadfastly avoiding the robotic dog's gaze. "Definitely not what I would have chosen, but it is what it is. And I've screwed up so many times that I just… I just want this one to be right. I want it to be right for her." He stared out towards the back of the lab, eyes clouded and serious.

Jimmy turned his head a fraction as the matter substantiator began emitting a short series of beeps. "Looks like my transportation's finally ready, at any rate," he said, hauling himself back to his feet. "Do me a favor and double-check on the string quartet's power source while I make sure this thing compiled correctly, okay, Goddard?"

Jimmy coughed as he neared the matter substantiator, a thick haze of smoke tumbling from the machine. It probably would have been easier to just rent a horse for the day from one of the nearby ranches, but this way, he could control its every movement without having to worry about being thrown… or, well, learning how to ride properly in the first place.

A set of polished hooves appeared beneath the smoke, and Jimmy smiled to himself, glancing back at the gleaming armor on the dressmaker's dummy. "You want romance, Cindy?" he said, grinning rakishly. "How's a shining knight on—"

A loud bleat sounded from the matter substantiator.

Jimmy turned slowly back to the output field, shoulders drooping as the smoke finally cleared.

"You," he said pointedly to the creature standing inside the machine, "were _very specifically _programmed to be a male American White Horse at precisely 16.2 hands with a reinforced capacity to carry _two_ average-sized humans and _one_ set of technologically-enhanced plate armor. Tell me, do you fit _any _of those criteria?"

The small white goat in the matter substantiator appeared entirely unconcerned, and bleated again.

Jimmy dropped his head into his hands. "Perfect," he muttered. "Just brilliant." He narrowed his eyes at the goat, which was attempting to eat the instrument panel on the substantiator. "Because _plenty _of romantic heroes have appeared before their ladies all resplendent on _goatback_!"

An unpleasant metallic grinding sound emanated from the computer behind him, and Jimmy knelt down to inspect it, grimacing as a shower of sparks shot out of the casing. "For the love of… Goddard! Scan for any abnormalities in this power circuit, would you?"

Goddard trotted over and carefully examined the computer, his own circuits whirring as his software scanned for problems. There was a strange, unfamiliar hum at the threshold of his upper-range hearing, and he whined at Jimmy in concern.

"I wouldn't worry about it, boy," Jimmy said. "We've put the systems under a much heavier load than all this. VOX is probably just a little overworked from all the new programming."

Goddard barked a question at him.

"Well, no, I'm not _entirely _sure about the total power output of all the machines working at once, but how bad could it be?"

Goddard barked again, and there was a note of discomfort in his tone.

"Don't worry so much, Goddard — we already repaired all of the circuits fried by the Poetry Analyzer, so it's just like any other heavy experiment day."

Jimmy started as the goat headbutted his hip, bleating irritably.

"Okay, not quite like every other day," Jimmy sighed. He scowled as the goat began to chew on the hem of his T-shirt. "Stop that, you mangy thing!"

Goddard turned away as Jimmy attempted to rescue his T-shirt from the goat, briefly entering into a bizarre tug-of-war with the creature in which the goat very quickly gained the upper hand.

The steady, high-pitched hum continued. Goddard analyzed its frequency and, determining that it was too high for Jimmy's weak human ears to detect, carefully began to sniff along the concrete floor, whining slightly as the smell of melting wire met his metallic nose. His nails clicked along the floor as he tracked the trail, moving faster and faster until he finally reached the Insta-Grow machine, snuffling his way through armfuls of roses as he made his way to the instrument panel, eyes growing wide as he observed the energy output meter.

He barked, loud and desperate, racing over to Jimmy's side.

"Give me back my shirt, you goddamn programming error!" Jimmy cursed, finally tugging the hem of his shirt away from the goat and reaching out to smack one of its horns, earning himself a solid headbutt to the stomach for his trouble.

Goddard was barking frantically as he reached a dazed Jimmy where he lay in a heap on the floor, coughing and clutching his stomach. "I'm starting to understand," he coughed again, "why goats are associated with the devil in popular culture." He shook his head, then frowned at Goddard's clearly agitated form. "What is it, boy? What's wrong?"

Goddard looked back to the Insta-Grow machine, where the steady hum had grown louder, smoke beginning to pour from its side vents.

Jimmy's eyes widened. "What in the…"

Goddard barely had time to leap in front of him and push him aside before the explosion tore through the lab. Shards of glass and singed wires rained down over them, and Goddard leapt up from his protective hunch over Jimmy, racing over to the twisted metal remains of the Insta-Grow machine and turning his internal fire extinguisher at the rising flames within it. Jimmy coughed and retrieved the standard extinguisher from near his computer and rushed to join him. Within moments, all that remained was the smell of burning metal and a haze of dissipating smoke.

Jimmy coughed into one hand. "That was a close one, eh, Goddard?" he said, reaching down to pet him and grimacing at the hot metal beneath his hand. "Thanks for saving me, boy."

Jimmy turned away from the wreckage to examine the rest of the lab. The holographic string quartet had disappeared, as had the goat. The dressmaker's dummy had tipped over, one side of the armor on it scorched black. Fortunately, the compiler and his computer seemed relatively undamaged, despite the severe power surge.

"Well," Jimmy sighed, running a hand through his hair, "looks like we'll have to nix the knight-on-horseback portion of today's entertainment." He glanced at the digital clock readout on his computer. "Five-thirty. At least we've got plenty of time to cobble what's left of the experiments together. Come on, Goddard — we're not dead yet." He walked over to his workbench and, retrieving a handful of tools, headed towards the back of the lab, Goddard trotting at his heels.

Neither of them noticed the frayed, sparking wires at the back of Jimmy's computer.

Or the clockface that remained stationary as the morning sun rose higher and higher.

* * *

Cindy ducked her chin into her scarf and blew on her fingers as she made her way through the double doors at the entrance to Retroville High, exhaling experimentally and frowning as her breath ghosted in the cold air. "You'd think they could keep it above fifty in here," she grumbled, tugging on the ends of her sweater sleeves. "At least when the outside temperature's somewhere between the ninth circle of hell and Christmas in Winnipeg."

"Oh, is _that _where you disappeared to?" a familiar female voice deadpanned from behind her. "Seriously, Cindy, I know you're the one with the black belt and all that ninja stuff and everything, but _I _was Invisible Sista, remember?"

Cindy laughed and tossed a friendly glance over her shoulder. "Hey, Libs," she greeted as Libby came up beside her, her textbooks perched on her hip. "Great weather we're having, huh?"

"I didn't even know it was legal for it to get this cold this far south," Libby groused, straightening the collar of her short wool coat. "Somebody needs to find that stupid groundhog and kick his little rodent ass, this is just _killing _my skin."

"Maybe Jimmy can make you some kind of ridiculously-advanced moisturizing cream," Cindy grinned as they reached her locker. "You'll probably glow in the dark for a few months, but hey, the days are still pretty short."

Libby raised a curious eyebrow at her. "Girl, what did you just say?"

"What?" Cindy said, reaching out to spin the combination to her locker. "I was just joking that Jimmy could…"

"_That_," Libby intoned, regarding Cindy curiously. "Friday afternoon I damn near had to hand that boy his own teeth for being his usual clueless jackass self and upsetting you, and today he's _Jimmy_? Not Nerdtron, not Freakbrain, not…"

"Oh, well, you know," Cindy said, a secretive smile pushing at the corners of her lips. "That was Friday."

"And, what, now you two are back to peacetime until you actually see each other again next period?"

"Maybe," Cindy said lightly, retrieving her literature textbook from the top shelf of her locker. "And maybe not."

Libby stared at her, carefully scrutinizing her face. "You're not telling me something," she said, narrowing her eyes slightly.

"Hm?" Cindy said, raising an eyebrow. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, first of all, you're currently rockin' the sappiest smile I've ever seen on your face…" She tilted her head and cast an appraising eye over Cindy's soft, fitted sweater and neatly-pressed skirt. "…and you're dressed up for _something_." She grinned mischievously. "You know, I was wondering where you were all weekend — I couldn't get ahold of you at all."

Cindy shrugged lightly, slotting her textbooks into her bag. "Well, I kind of slept in a little on Saturday. Just needed some time to myself to think about… some things." She absently swiped her thumb against her lips and smiled to herself.

"Mm-hm," Libby said, crossing her arms over her chest. "'Some things' that were more important than hearing about what happened at the dance?"

"Oh, right," Cindy said with a careless nod. "The dance was on Friday, wasn't it."

Libby stared at her. "Yes," she said slowly. "The dance. The dance that you wanted to go to. The dance that you did _not _go to because of some impotent _loser _whose stupid ass shall not even be named. _That _dance. Remember?"

"Mm-hm. Did you have fun?"

Libby rolled her eyes and leaned up against the locker next to Cindy's. "Girl, you didn't miss a damn thing," she sighed. "First of all, I don't know who they had workin' the DJ booth, but dude should be hauled up before the Libby Tribunal for crimes against music. Who the hell wants to hear jam band music during a dance? Or _ever_?"

"Ugh, gross. Did they at least play something danceable for you at some point?"

"_Finally_," Libby intoned, "after three guys threatened to strangle him with his headphones if he played one more Disco Biscuits song. But anyway, I was _trying _to tell you about Ashley and Reed. First of all, girl shows up in this hoochie-mama yellow chiffon thing — _so_ ugly. Hair was a mess, some cheap-ass jewelry, just totally classless…"

"Libs," Cindy said gently, "I'm over it. Really, Genuinely. You don't have to trash her for me."

"So anyway," Libby continued as if she hadn't spoken, "she and Reed start dancin' up to me when I'm trying to get my groove on — with what little groove was to be had with that DJ — and Ashley asks where you are with that so-fake smile like she goddamn cares, but she doesn't see Sheen comin' up double-fisting Purple Flurp for us and damn if she doesn't turn around right into him and end up dousing her ugly-ass dress all over."

Libby laughed. "Dress is ruined, hair is ruined, and karma bites the fabulous Ms. Ashley right in her badly-dressed ass." She grinned wickedly. "Gotta say, she really did look better that way."

Cindy laughed, hoisting her bag over her shoulder. "Now _that _I wouldn't have minded seeing."

"That's why I was _trying _to get ahold of you all weekend to _tell _you," Libby sighed. "Figured it would cheer you up a little. Where did you end up going Friday night? I called you on your cell right after Sheen and I got home, just in case you wanted to come over for ice cream sundaes and bad movies, but you didn't answer. So I called your house, and your mom didn't even know where you were." She frowned a little at Cindy. "Please don't tell me you spent all of Friday night stuck at the library doing your homework, girl, 'cause I will personally kick Little Miss Ashley's ass from here to November."

"Well…" Cindy hesitated, closing her locker. "I mean… I _was _working on my homework. But I wasn't at the library."

"Where were you, then?"

"Oh, well," she said, trying and failing to stop the smile pushing at the corners of her lips. "I was at Jimmy's."

Libby's eyes widened slightly, and she grinned. "Oh?" she said knowingly. "And what did you do at _Jimmy's_?"

Cindy crossed her arms against her chest and schooled her features into a steady, nonchalant expression. "Well, mostly we worked on his paper for Ms. Birch's class," she said simply.

Libby stared at her for a moment, then sighed. "And let me guess," she said, rolling her eyes, "you two got into some huge sexually-charged argument, just like always, yelled a bunch of insults at each other, _just like always, _and you both stormed off in opposite directions, leaving the rest of us to just stand around and wonder when the _hell_—"

"He kissed me, Libs."

Libby's tirade stopped sharply as she stared at Cindy, eyes wide, mouth open.

Cindy grinned and wrapped her arms around herself. "He _kissed_ me," she repeated, her voice bright with joy and warm affection.

Libby kept staring.

And kept staring.

Before suddenly shrieking loudly and throwing her arms around Cindy in girlfriendly excitement.

"Oh my _God,_" Libby said in clear disbelief. "This is huge, girl. _Huge_. He actually _kissed _you?"

Cindy nodded, her cheeks flushing crimson as her smile grew even wider.

"What did he _say_?"

"He didn't really say too much in the beginning, just a whole bunch of confusing stuff about finally understanding romance and everything we've been studying in Ms. Birch's class, but… oh my God, Libs, you should have seen the look in his eyes." Cindy sighed and wrapped her arms more tightly around herself, still smiling.

Libby shook her head, grinning to herself. "Whaddya know," she said, laughing. "The idiot finally figured it out."

"We did work on our homework, but we also kind of, you know, kissed a lot…" Cindy blushed. "…and then after I went home he called my cell and I don't know _what _he's planning in that clueless brain of his, but he told me to make sure I got to school early _and_…" She took a deep breath. "He told me to come over to the lab after school with my dress."

Libby squealed again and leaned up against the lockers. "You know what that means, don't you?" she said. "Betcha anything he's spent all weekend puttin' together a replacement dance for just the two of you. Damn, it'll probably be better than the _actual_ dance. Who'dve thought Bighead actually had it in him?"

"I _know_, right?" Cindy laughed.

Libby grinned and punched her lightly in the shoulder. "I am so happy for you right now, girl," she said. "You just have no idea."

"…yeah," Cindy said, voice growing soft. She absently toyed with the hem of her sweater.

Libby looked at her a bit curiously before shrugging. "Well," she said brightly, reaching out to straighten Cindy's bangs, "let's get you off to English class. Don't want to keep your Romeo waiting too long."

"I seem to remember Romeo being at the center of _way _fewer explosions than Neutron."

"Dude was an angsty as hell teenager with little to no common sense. Toss Jimmy in a doublet and give him a slight head injury and no one'll be able to tell the difference." Libby took Cindy by the hand and tugged on it lightly, frowning as Cindy resisted. "Cindy? What's up, girl?"

Cindy bit her lower lip, casting her eyes down at the floor. "…I was just thinking," she began hesitantly.

Libby sighed, dropping Cindy's hand to press her own to her forehead. "Because that alwaysworks _so_ well when it comes to you two," she deadpanned.

"…what if…" Cindy hesitated, twisting the hem of her sweater in nervous fingers, "what if he was just… feeling sorry for me because of Reed and the dance and everything? Or maybe he was just caught up in the emotion of all the poetry he was reading. It can't be… it has to be _something_, Libs, there's just no way that he could ever actually—"

She started as Libby reached over and slapped her, very lightly.

"Now you listen to me, and you listen good," Libby said firmly, pressing her hands to Cindy's shoulders. "One, you and I both know the day Jimmy gets 'caught up in the emotion' of some poem is the day Sheen understands a poem that doesn't involve the word 'Nantucket'. And two, you and that boy have been droolin' over each other since the day you met, and _every single time _y'all actually do somethin' about it, one of you or both of you chicken out and run back to hiding behind your dumbass rivalry instead of just jumping each other and making out like normal people. We've all had to put up with you two arguing and sniping at each other and just generally making life miserable for everyone else for _years_, and if after _finally _figuring it out you decide it's too damn scary and go back to pretending to hate each other, someone's gettin' hurt, and even though you know I love you, girl, I'm not too particular about which one of you it is. Got it?"

Cindy smiled and laughed lightly, nodding. "So you really think he means it, then?" she asked as she and Libby started off towards AP English.

Libby rolled her eyes and laughed. "Cin, seriously," she said. "We both know that boy is as clueless as they come. You ask a question like that, you've gotta ask yourself if he's got the social savvy to _fake _it."

They stopped, a brief glance passing between them before they both burst into full-throated laughter. Libby reached over and wrapped a friendly arm around Cindy's shoulders. "See?" she said. "You're gonna be all right."

"Yeah," Cindy said, frowning slightly as they stopped in front of Ms. Birch's classroom.

Libby gave her a confident squeeze. "Go get 'im, girl."

Cindy took a deep breath. "Okay," she said firmly, forcing a note of confidence into her tone she didn't really feel. "Okay." She took a step towards the door before uneasily turning back to Libby. "How's my hair look?" she asked.

"Perfect, as always."

"And is this sweater too bright? Maybe I should have gone with something neutral instead of green…"

"Brings out your eyes. It's gorgeous. You look great."

"I knew I should have gone with my strawberry lipgloss today instead of the plain. Let me just run back to…"

"Get _in _there!" Libby shoved her hard between her shoulderblades, and she stumbled slightly into the classroom.

_Please, please don't let Jimmy have seen that_… Cindy thought, blushing as she regained her footing. Luckily, his seat was still empty, as was the rest of the room. _Well, first one here, _she thought to herself. At least she had time to make sure she looked just right for his arrival. She settled into her seat and crossed her legs, smoothing out her skirt and sitting up straight, staring ahead at the board.

…_way too buttoned-up_, she frowned. Thinking for a moment, she slouched a bit in her seat and cast a nonchalant glance at the doorway, carefully careless. _Too obvious_, she thought. After a moment, she retrieved her textbook and notebook from her bag and leaned back in her seat, a pleased and self-important smile tugging at the corner of her lips, and willed her heartbeat to settle as she waited.

Her smile slipped just a fraction as the first students entered the classroom, smiling and greeting her as they took their seats. _Leave it to Neutron to tell __**me **__to be here early for his surprise and show up late, _she thought to herself. It was just so, well, _Jimmy _to be that clueless that her smile returned, open and genuine.

As Cindy waited, her mind drifted to thoughts of just what it was Jimmy might have planned for the day, a thousand grand romantic visions dancing in her head. Maybe he'd show up bearing a unique species of rose he'd cultivated and named after her. Or wearing black-tie and escorting her around school all day like the date to the dance she'd so longed for him to be. Or in keeping with the theme of Ms. Birch's class and his essay revisions, maybe he'd even found himself a technologically-advanced flying horse and he'd literally sweep her off her feet and they'd ride off into the sunset together… or, well, at least to chemistry class.

_Bet Ashley'll love that_, Cindy thought with a darkly pleased smile. She'd told Libby the truth — she didn't care much about Ashley and Reed and Friday's betrayal anymore, but the slight sting of rejection still lingered, and she couldn't help but relish the thought of walking through the halls on Jimmy's arm, the whole school whispering in awe about them and how romantic it all was and maybe he'd even kiss her right there in front of everyone…

"Good morning, Cynthia," Ms. Birch smiled at her as she entered the classroom, setting her briefcase down on her desk. "Did you have a nice weekend?"

Cindy returned her smile. "You know," she said, "I did. I really did."

"Glad to hear it." Ms. Birch began pulling her lesson plans from her briefcase and setting up for class.

Cindy quickly assumed her previous self-satisfied look as footsteps approached the classroom, but it was just Oleander. He waved at her before settling into his seat at the far side of the room, followed by Nissa.

Cindy glanced up at the clock, a faint note of unease beginning to rise within her. _You'd better not be doing this just to get the upper hand, Neutron_, she thought, a bit irritably.

Students continued entering the classroom, until the bell sounded the start of the period and the only seat that remained glaringly empty was the one beside hers.

Cindy stared at it uneasily. _What are you doing? _she thought towards Jimmy's noticeably absent form. Maybe he was working on some last-minute revisions on his paper. That had to be it — Jimmy was a perfectionist through-and-through, and after everything he'd been through in his quest to understand what they'd learned in class, he was probably just making a few final adjustments in the library before turning it in.

Cindy frowned. It was definitely risky, though — he was already clearly on Ms. Birch's bad side, and after coming to class late on Friday, she probably wouldn't be too pleased at his showing up late again, especially on the day his revisions were due.

"All right, everyone," Ms. Birch said, coming to her feet, "before we get started, if any of you completed a revised draft of your last paper, hand those to the front, please."

Cindy mutely accepted the handful of papers that shuffled up her row, handing them to Ms. Birch. Ms. Birch took them from her, casting a curious glance at Jimmy's empty desk and raising an expectant eyebrow at Cindy, as if anticipating an explanation, but Cindy could only shrug in bafflement. Ms. Birch sighed and shook her head before moving on to collect the rest of the papers.

_Jimmy, you idiot_, Cindy thought, slouching down a bit in her seat. _You're going to be lucky if she even lets you turn in your paper if you don't get here in the next minute or two. What the hell are you __**doing**__? _

"Is that everyone?" Ms. Birch asked, setting the papers down on her desk. "Okay then. This week we're going to be moving forward to the Elizabethan era, which means, yes, Shakespeare. I promise it won't be nearly as painful as you think — you already made it through Middle English alive, you can handle the Bard. Now before we look at a few sonnets, let's get into a little historical background."

Cindy uneasily uncapped her pen and turned to a fresh sheet of notebook paper, her heart clenching painfully as Ms. Birch crossed the room and firmly pulled the door closed.

* * *

When the bell rang at 11:15, Cindy's notes were little more than a series of halfhearted squiggles, far from her usual neatly-written observations and insights.

Jimmy had never come to class.

Cindy started as Ms. Birch closed her textbook with a firm snap as the bell rang. "Okay, everyone," she said, "for those of you who turned in a revision, I should have those back to you by the end of the week. I know you all probably had a busy weekend working on them, so tonight just read the selected sonnets in the text and we'll talk about your reactions to them in class instead of having written responses. See you all tomorrow."

Cindy felt Ms. Birch's curious gaze on her as her classmates packed up their things around her, and she hurried to gather her books quickly enough to make it out of the classroom before Ms. Birch cornered her and asked her the question she didn't understand any more than she did.

"Cynthia," Ms. Birch said, slotting her papers into her briefcase, "you wouldn't happen to know where James is, would you?"

"Not a clue," Cindy said, her voice tight and carefully controlled. There was a heavy, constricting pain beginning to blossom deep within her chest, and she bit down on the inside of her lower lip.

Ms. Birch shook her head. "I must admit, I'm rather surprised he missed class today. I thought he'd have been beating a path to my door to turn in his revised paper before school even started."

"Yeah," Cindy said distantly, hoisting up her books and clutching them a bit more tightly than she meant to. "He… was supposed to be here early today. I was so sure he'd be here. He said…" She sighed, her shoulders slumping in defeat. "I have no idea why he didn't come to class," she said finally.

"Mm," Ms. Birch said noncommittally. "Shame. I informed the class multiple times that today was the last day I'd accept paper revisions. I was sure he'd submit a revision – he was clamoring louder than anyone about his grade, even though he got the second-highest in the class."

"Jimmy doesn't do well with second-best," Cindy said with a humorless smile.

Ms. Birch smiled sympathetically at her. "I think James has a lot of growing to do," she said. "But then we all do, I suppose. He's lucky to have a friend like you to help him along."

_Friend_. The word sounded hollow, mocking, meaningless. An hour earlier, she had been so sure that they'd gone so far beyond that, but… She glanced back at his empty desk, the pain in her chest growing sharper.

Ms. Birch closed her briefcase. "See you tomorrow, Cynthia," she said in a kind voice. "Try to enjoy the rest of your day."

"Thanks," Cindy said, attempting to offer up a grateful smile, but it was empty.

She clutched her books to her chest as she left the classroom, so caught up in her own thoughts that she nearly crashed into Libby where she stood waiting by the doorway.

"So, what did he do?" Libby asked excitedly, peering behind Cindy into the classroom. "Did he bail early or something? I didn't see him come out."

"He didn't come," Cindy said. Her voice sounded strangely hollow even to her own ears.

"What do you mean he didn't come? Wasn't that stupid paper of his due?"

"Yeah," Cindy said, casting a worried glance back at the classroom. "I hope nothing happened to him."

Libby scoffed. "Something's damn well _gonna _happen if he doesn't show up real quick. I should've known he'd manage to screw things up."

Cindy didn't answer as she hoisted her books and started towards the nearby staircase to the second floor.

"Aren't you going to your locker before next period?" Libby asked, raising an eyebrow at Cindy.

Cindy paused by the stairwell. "…I think I'm just going to go right to chem," she said. "You know how Neutron is, he's probably setting up whatever he's planning in the chem lab." She attempted a smile. "You may want to grab your coat from your locker for next period just in case the idiot manages to set off the fire alarm. Again."

Libby laughed and gave Cindy a quick hug. "Okay," she said. "I'll meet you after class and you can tell me all about Neutron's stupid Valentine's Day thing and how many people had to go to the hospital because of it."

"Deal. What's the over/under everyone's working with this week?"

"I heard it's at three — they're keeping it on the low end since everyone's gearing up for the big action at the science fair next week. Want me to take the over for you when I see Butch this period?"

"Probably a good idea. Put me down for my usual."

"You got it. Man, I am going to be _rocking _the Neutron Damage pool with his girlfriend as my best friend. It's almost like insider trading," Libby said, laughing to herself.

Cindy flushed. "I'm not really… I mean, we haven't talked about… we're not…"

"Yeah, yeah," Libby said with a knowing smirk. "See you after class, girl — tell your _boyfriend _I said hi."

Cindy smiled and waved as she climbed the stairs, making her way through the crowd of students to the gleaming white chem lab. There was a small group of students already in their seats, talking idly amongst themselves.

Jimmy wasn't with them.

Or anywhere in the room.

Cindy frowned as she took her familiar seat in the front, casting a glance around the classroom. There was no paraphernalia scattered around, no bottles of solvents and chemicals, none of the lingering unpleasant smells that usually resulted from whatever strange experiment Jimmy had concocted on a given day.

It was colder in the chemistry classroom than it had been even in the hallways. Cindy tugged at the ends of her sweater sleeves, wrapping her arms around herself, any attempt at adopting a schooled nonchalance fading in the face of gnawing fear and the looming specter of crushing disappointment.

The clock ticked closer to the start of the period. Cindy tugged her notebook out of her bag and set it on her desk, eyes never moving from the clock. More students slowly filed into the classroom. The teacher came in and pulled down the projection screen, setting up a Powerpoint presentation of several advanced formulas.

Cindy glanced from the clock to the doorway.

_Make sure you get there early_, he'd said.

The bell rang, and the chemistry teacher closed the door to the classroom. "Okay, let's get started," he said in a cheerful voice.

Cindy distantly heard the sound of students around her shifting, opening backpacks, clicking pens, turning notebook pages. The pain in her chest had grown so sharp and strong that she could barely breathe. She uncapped her pen and wrote the date at the top of her notes, her hand shaking, hot, angry tears pressing at the corners of her eyes.

She kept glancing at the doorway all through class, just in case. The teacher had to call her name three times before she realized he was asking her a question about the chemical composition of silver phosphate, and she'd barely been able to keep her voice steady as she answered.

As class wore on, the noises of the classroom and the teacher's voice faded around her. All that remained were the same memories that had so warmed her all weekend. _You looked beautiful. I want you here. _His lips warm and soft against hers. His admiring, affectionate glances at her as she worked on her homework, when he thought she didn't notice. The look in his eyes as he watched her model her dress.

_Okay, Neutron_, Cindy thought, teetering somewhere between anger and hurt. _You want to have the upper hand, huh? Want to make this a power struggle? You'll be damn lucky if I don't throw your surprise back in your face whenever you __**do **__finally show up. _She cast a glare at the doorway and began to take her notes in a heavy hand.

But Jimmy never came to chemistry class.

Or the class after that.

Or the class after that.

* * *

Jimmy wiped the back of his hand across his sweat-slicked forehead, hurriedly repairing the frayed wire in front of him, a screwdriver held between his teeth. "Is that one locked down, Goddard?" he yelled as best he could.

Goddard barked a negative from somewhere deep in the lab.

"Well get on it, dammit! I think I've got this one!" He connected the last wire, ignoring the sharp bite of broken glass against his arm as he lay prone on the floor, peering into the charred compiler in front of him. "Got it!"

Jimmy sighed and pulled himself to his feet, pressing his hand to the oozing wound across his forearm, sweat stinging against a smaller cut against his right temple, his mind torn somewhere between screaming and crying from frustration.

Things had been going so well after he and Goddard had managed to extinguish the Insta-Grow machine… or so they'd thought. Goddard's misgivings about the overloaded systems had proved painfully correct, as the compiler had exploded shortly thereafter as well, setting off a chain reaction that took out all but the emergency lights and backup power supplies. The sprinklers had activated as electrical fires tore through the lab, shorting out the few machines that hadn't been destroyed and drenching the colorful paper decorations Goddard had strung above the makeshift dance floor he'd constructed. The matter substantiator had malfunctioned, and the goat had recompiled and was currently running around the lab in merry circles.

Jimmy bit back an oath as he nudged a piece of broken glass with the toe of one sneaker and reached for the nearby first aid kit, tightly bandaging his forearm. _You had to make everything 'perfect,' didn't you, Neutron, _he thought angrily to himself, teeth clenched tight enough to break. _Great job with that. _

It wasn't even his _fault_, he thought as he tied off his bandage. This never would have even happened without Ms. Birch's goddamn assignment. The circuits wouldn't have been damaged by the Poetry Analyzer, he wouldn't have even had to _use _Poetry Analyzer if Ms. Birch hadn't decided to make his life miserable with her stupid courtly love module, and he never would have put so much strain on the lab's power systems if he hadn't had to enlist Cindy's help for that stupid assignment and ended up falling in love with her and her stupid pretty face and her stupid smart brain and her stupid _girl-ness _that overrode every bit of sense he'd ever possessed.

Jimmy thumped the broken compiler with his good hand, scowling as he took in the damage to his lab. It'd probably take him weeks to repair everything, and for what? For some kind of ridiculous romantic gesture for someone who probably wouldn't even appreciate it? _Oh, thanks, __**Nerdtron**__, flowers and chocolate, how original. And a goat! Why, you __**shouldn't **__have! _

And that was assuming that she wouldn't just brush him off as soon as she saw him, return to her usual cool, detached arrogance, and laugh at him for being so stupid as to think she would _ever _go out with someone like him.

_Well fine, Vortex_, he thought venomously. _See if I care if…_

Jimmy's dark thoughts ceased as he observed a single intact rose lying beneath a pile of broken stems and scattered petals. It was wilted, the edges of its petals slightly singed, the bottom of its stem crooked… but it was something. He knelt down and carefully retrieved it from the small puddle of water in which it rested, absently running his fingers over the petals, guilt beginning to rise within him.

It really wasn't Cindy's fault that everything had gone wrong, he thought to himself, sighing. It was supposed to be so perfect — Jimmy would be waiting for her when she got to school, a knight in shining technologically-advanced armor on holographic horseback, a rakish grin on his features. He'd take Cindy by the arm and swing her undoubtedly-stunned form up behind him, and they'd ride off to homeroom, which Goddard would have filled with beautifully-arranged long-stemmed roses. The string quartet would be there, and Jimmy would bow and present her with a selection of the finest synthesized Belgian chocolates the world had ever seen.

And after school… she'd change into her dress, and he'd activate the black-tie sequence he'd already programmed into VOX's wardrobe, and he'd cover her eyes as he led her into the lab — his way, the normal way — and then it'd be just like the dance she'd missed, only better, with twined roses and candlelight and classical music and just the two of them, and she'd take his hand and they'd dance together and he'd be absolutely terrible at it but it would just make her laugh and he'd lean in and kiss her like he'd wanted to from the moment he saw her in her dress…

But now…

Jimmy sighed and pressed a hand to his bandage. The horse was an ill-tempered goat chewing on a length of wire and eyeing him with aggressive disdain. Not _all _of the roses were on fire, but the ones that weren't by and large now required assembly. He'd initially questioned his decision to program a holographic string quartet rather than hiring a real one, but considering the holographic one was currently a melted thumb drive on the floor by his desk, he supposed he (and the musicians of Retroville) should be grateful. And as for the dance… well, between the water and smoke damage, the metallic debris scattered across the lab, and the harsh emergency lighting, even if by some miracle he _did_ manage to get things up and running again, it'd probably be more romantic if he just found an abandoned parking lot and tried to dance with her there.

Jimmy turned the surviving rose over in his hand. It was such a small gesture, so insignificant… but it was all he had left.

"It's the thought that counts, right, Goddard?" he said with a long sigh, placing the rose on his desk. "Hopefully I'll at least have time to shower and change before school." He glanced at the digital clock on his computer screen, glowing dimly from the emergency power supply. "Five-thirty," he said to himself, running a hand through his hair. "Well, that's plenty of time to…"

Jimmy's voice trailed off, a chill running down his spine. "Five-thirty," he repeated. "It can't still be five-thirty." He glanced around the lab, looking for anything that would confirm or refute the time. His watch insisted it was five-thirty. So did the digital clock at the far end of the lab.

"Goddard!" he called as the robotic dog returned from the back of the lab, his casing covered in soot and grease. "Hey, boy, you weren't damaged by the power surge at all, were you?"

Goddard barked a negative, tilting his head.

Jimmy knelt down beside him. "Run a full scan on the electrical systems in the lab and give me a damage report, as quick as you can without you getting overloaded, too."

Goddard's circuits began to whirr as his viewscreen lit up with a number of digital schematics, all flashing red in multiple locations as he identified the extent of the damage, from his computer to the compiler to the charred shell of the Insta-Grow machine.

"It must have damaged the time circuits in the lab, too," Jimmy said quietly, an overwhelming sense of dread washing over him. "Goddard… your time circuits are still functioning, aren't they?"

Goddard barked an affirmative, then set aside the schematics long enough to pull up the correct time.

Two-thirty.

The lab was silent as Jimmy stared at Goddard's internal clock, watching numbly as it turned to 2:31. 2:32. 2:33.

He recalled his angry, frustrated thoughts toward Cindy from earlier, his exhaustion and irritation coalescing into the belief that nothing he could do would be enough for her.

He pictured her arriving at school — early, just like he'd told her to. She'd be smiling and beautiful, like she always was, nervous but too proud to show it, waiting for him to surprise her and solidify everything they'd only just begun to understand Friday night. Pictured that smile fading as the day wore on, into disappointment, anger, and blinding hurt.

In his frustration, he'd been so sure that nothing would be good enough for her.

And he'd managed to give her just that.

Jimmy felt strangely numb as he made his way wordlessly over to the couch, where the goat had begun chewing on a cushion. It eyed him with open irritation and spat out the cushion, offering up a full-throated bleat.

"Do me a favor," Jimmy said, his voice flat, eyes dead. "Just knock me clear across the lab so I'm at least warmed up for when Cindy does it later."

* * *

Cindy's shoulders were squared, her head held high, features schooled into a cool mask of indifference as the final bell rang. Her textbooks were perfectly aligned at her side, and she nodded tersely to Libby as she exited her last-period physics class.

Libby's eyes were soft and sad in the doorway to the classroom. She didn't say a word.

Cindy smiled at her, pained and venomous. "Like anyone would want to spend Valentine's Day with _Freaktron_ in the first place," she scoffed, tossing her hair over one shoulder and hoisting her books to her chest. "I don't know _what _I was thinking. We'll just have to chalk this one up to temporary insanity, Libs. Sorry if I worried you."

Libby sighed and crossed her arms across her chest. "I knew Neutron would manage to screw it up," she said, shaking her head. "I'm so sorry, Cin. He doesn't deserve you."

Cindy laughed bitterly. "Tell me something I don't know, Libs. Can you imagine if we'd actually gone through with it?" She laughed again, frowning as a tear slipped down her cheek. "Looks like he did me a favor, huh?"

"Cindy, look, I know it's bad right now…"

"Seriously, can you believe I actually _kissed _him?" Cindy leaned up against a nearby locker, grinning at Libby. "Oh man, I almost believed him, you know? I never knew Neutron was such a good liar."

"Cindy…" Libby said uneasily.

"You know he told me I was beautiful?" Cindy said in a too-bright voice. "I was trying on my dress for the dance, and he saw it, and he told me I was beautiful." She laughed, her voice sounding strangely close to a sob, and another tear fell, then another. "He told me I was beautiful, Libby. He said..."

Her books fell limply to the floor, and she collapsed into Libby's arms, finally letting her tears fall in earnest.

* * *

"_You'll be all right, girl. I promise." _

Cindy sighed as she neared her house, her books feeling heavy at her side. Libby had said the same thing to her after Reed. At the time, it had felt like her heart was breaking in half, the cruel sting of rejection, of being replaced by someone else tearing into her.

But she didn't love Reed. So she could stand it.

Especially when she had…

Cindy clenched her teeth together as she started up the steps to her front porch, glancing across the street to Jimmy's clubhouse, heartbreak and disappointment beginning to fade in the face of the slow but fervent boil of anger rising up within her.

_I'm trying to understand for my paper revisions, of course. _

That's what Jimmy had said after he'd kissed her for the first time. At the time, she'd thought he was joking, but…

…but what if that's all he _was _using her for? Jimmy was first and foremost driven by academic excellence. The A-minus he'd received from Ms. Birch had clearly rattled him. What if… what if he really _had _just used her as a stepping stone for his paper revisions? As a source of knowledge he could bleed dry and vault over, so he could regain his storied position as the Smartest Kid in School and lord it over her that she'd never beat him, at anything, ever, that she was always going to languish in his shadow?

He'd held her. He'd kissed her. There had been so many beautiful, unspoken things in his eyes.

But that A-minus was still suspended between them.

And he hadn't come to school today.

Cindy glanced up at her bedroom window. _Bring your dress_, he'd said.

She looked back toward his clubhouse and scowled, setting her books down on the porch and making her way across the street.

_Sorry, Neutron_, she thought. _I can kick your ass way better in street clothes. _

* * *

Jimmy had managed to sweep up most of the broken glass and singed wires with Goddard's vacuum mode. He'd deposited the dead roses into the industrial trash bin at the back of the lab — he'd have to take those out later. Nothing like the smell of rotting vegetation to add to the bouquet of electrical burns and charred metal already wafting through the air.

Goddard stood at his heels, reaching forward to nuzzle his head against the back of his knees. Jimmy reached down to pet him absently before falling heavily into his computer chair.

"You know, Goddard," he said, voice hollow, "I thought I'd finally understood everything about courtly love and romance. I really did. But none of the poets bothered to mention how miserable it can be."

Goddard licked his hand comfortingly and curled up at his feet, staring up at him with concerned eyes.

Even Goddard couldn't break through the overwhelming wave of despondency washing over him, Jimmy thought, staring at his damaged computer with blank, empty eyes. He'd been so sure, so determined. He'd _finally _understood it, dammit — he'd finally understood. He loved Cindy, every impossible, frustrating, maddening inch of her. He wanted to make her happy. He wanted her to _know_.

And in the end, he knew he'd be lucky if she ever spoke to him again.

Goddard had managed to decompile the goat before it could oblige Jimmy and hurl him clear across the room, but there was still a deep, resonating ache in his chest, pressing painfully until it was everything he and his masculine pride could do not to cry.

VOX's emergency alert suddenly sounded, momentarily breaking him out of his misery.

"Neutron," a cold, tight female voice called as he activated the voice sensor. "You're a dead man."

"Hey, Cindy," Jimmy said, dropping his head against his keyboard, shoulders drooping.

There was a moment of silence from outside. "'Hey, Cindy,'" she repeated. "Would that be 'hey, Cindy, sorry I didn't bother to come to school on Valentine's Day after I told you to make sure you were there'? Or 'hey, Cindy, I'm a complete idiot and didn't bother to turn in a paper revision for Ms. Birch's class despite angsting over it for like a week and using up your Friday night to teach me everything I didn't understand'? Or '_hey, Cindy, I am an abject failure of humanity and have NO social—"_

"No, 'hey, Cindy, watch your step,'" Jimmy said blandly, pressing a button on his keyboard.

"Watch my… what are you…?" Her question turned into a scream, then a resounding thud as she landed on the crash pad in the lab. Jimmy didn't lift his head from the keyboard to look at her.

"Be careful over there," he called over to her, closing his eyes. "We got up most of the broken glass, but it'll be dangerous until I can do a full clean-up later this week."

He heard Cindy gingerly picking her way over broken glass and scattered wires. "It looks like a flower shop exploded in here," he heard her say. "…literally."

"Yeah," Jimmy laughed mirthlessly, lifting his head and turning in his chair to look at her. "The Insta-Grow machine still needs a lot of work." He stood and wordlessly reached out to her with the one surviving rose, features still despondent. "This one made it through. I'm still not sure how, but, well... it's yours, if you want it."

Cindy's scowl melted into a frown as she reached out hesitantly to pluck the rose from his fingers, turning it over in her hands. Jimmy stared at her, taking in her neatly-arrayed appearance, her softly-flowing hair. "You were waiting for me, weren't you," he said quietly, and the words seemed to tear at his throat as he said them.

Cindy shot him a venomous glare, tossing the rose onto the couch behind her. "And what gives you that idea, Neutron?" she said tightly. "I've got better things to do than worry about you deciding to skip school for the hell of it."

"It wasn't for the hell of it," Jimmy said, reaching for her hand and sighing as she pulled it back violently. "Cindy, honestly, I had so many things planned…"

"It's fine," Cindy said carelessly, crossing her arms over her chest. "I've got to hand it to you, Neutron — you're more of a bastard than I ever could have imagined. And I've imagined _a lot_."

"Cindy…"

"You must have had so much fun down here today laughing at me, huh? 'Get to school early, Cindy,' 'bring your dress, Cindy,'" she laughed, harsh and bitter. "I have to say, though, even I didn't think you'd go that far after…" She stopped, pressing her lips together and swallowing hard. "Whatever," she muttered. "Thanks for the waking nightmare, Neutron. Glad you enjoyed yourself. Looks like it's back to the status quo for…"

Jimmy launched forward angrily, grasping her wrists in his hands and pressing her back against the couch, kissing her with all of the pain and frustration that had been burning inside him all day.

He yelped as Cindy wrenched herself from his grasp and punched him, right against his still-bruised cheek.

"Stop it," she spat, and there were angry tears running down her face. "You son of a bitch, stop doing this to me!"

"Doing _what_?" Jimmy yelled back. "Trying to do everything I possibly could to make you _happy_?" He flung his arms wide and gestured to the damaged lab. "For Christ's sake, Vortex, look at this place! Do you think I did this for _myself_?"

Cindy poked him hard in the chest. "Since when do you _not _do everything for yourself, Neutron?"

"Oh, real classy, Vortex," Jimmy rolled his eyes. "I'm so glad I fucking _destroyed _my lab trying to set up the perfect Valentine's Day for you."

"And thank you _so much_, I had the best Valentine's Day ever, _all by myself_!"

"Well I'm sure you'd have enjoyed yourself _so much more_ if you could have spent the entire day screaming epithets at me, but unfortunately—"

Jimmy's words stopped as he found himself suddenly hurtling across the room, a sharp pain radiating from his side.

He faintly heard Cindy calling his name in a panic before everything went dark.

* * *

"Jimmy? Jimmy, can you hear me?"

Jimmy opened his eyes, blinking rapidly as he attempted to focus on Cindy and Goddard's worried faces hovering over him. "What happened?" he asked groggily, turning his head from his prone position on the floor.

Goddard barked, then showed Cindy his viewscreen.

"So according to Robo-dog here, your goat hadn't been fully decompiled," Cindy said, a question in her voice. "Your _goat_, Neutron?"

"It was supposed to be a horse," Jimmy said weakly, taking Cindy's hand and pulling himself to his feet. "A white horse." He held fast to Cindy's hand as she attempted to pull away. "No, you need to see."

He brought her to his singed armor, nudging it with his toes. "It was supposed to be… well." He blushed. "You know, the whole… knight-in-shining-armor thing."

Cindy glanced at the armor, then to him, features inscrutable.

Jimmy's shoulders slumped as he gestured to various parts of the lab. "String quartet, programmed for Vivaldi, because he was your favorite," he said listlessly.

"Still is," Cindy said quietly, still avoiding his gaze.

"Roses," he said, pointing to the charred remains of the Insta-Grow machine.

"I see."

"There was… supposed to be so much," Jimmy sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Roses and chocolate and music and…" He gestured to the soggy crepe paper and paper decorations in the far corner. "I wanted you to have a chance to wear your dress for…" He fought to speak against the sudden lump in his throat. "…for someone who appreciates you. Just once."

He took Cindy's free hand in his, turning her to face him. "It was a mistake," he said earnestly. "Goddard and I hadn't repaired all of the circuits damaged by the Poetry Analyzer, and by the time we got everything under control and I realized that the power surge had damaged the time circuits, school was already over."

Cindy was silent, staring down at their joined hands.

"All this for me, huh," she said quietly. "Explosions, fires, and a weird pissed-off goat. Standard Neutron Valentine's Day, I guess."

"Yeah," Jimmy said, rubbing his thumbs against the backs of her hands, his mood lifting slightly when she didn't pull away. "Honestly, Cindy, I tried. It was supposed to be this whole… grand romantic gesture and everything was supposed to be perfect and… the whole thing just blew up in my face."

"Literally, from the look of things," Cindy said, tilting her head and frowning a little at his bandaged arm.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," Jimmy said, squeezing her hands. "I know it doesn't mean much, I've screwed up so many things, but…"

"Well," Cindy said, "just the fact that you went to so much trouble, even though you _did _completely ruin it like you always…" Her voice softened at the pained look on his face, and she pressed one hand to his bruised cheek. "Thank you," she said quietly.

She'd barely gotten the words out before Jimmy pulled her into a tight hug, resting his chin against the top of her head. "Forgive me for bailing on you?"

"…I'll forgive you," Cindy said, and he could feel the curve of her smile against his chest. "You know, you really could have just done all of this _after _school."

"Yeah, that thought occurred to me sometime around the third fire. Would you have been willing to wait that long?"

"No, not just for me." Cindy loosened herself from his embrace, looking up at him, eyes serious. "Today was the revision deadline in Ms. Birch's class," she reminded him quietly. "I talked to her after class and… it doesn't sound like she's going to give you an extension or anything."

"Doesn't surprise me," Jimmy said. "I'm not exactly her favorite person."

Cindy bit her lower lip. "I could try to negotiate an extension for you," she said finally. "I mean, I know it's a low bar, but Ms. Birch _does _like me more than you."

Jimmy shook his head. "It's okay, Cindy."

"No, it's not. You didn't skip school on purpose — she'll understand that."

"No, I mean… I decided not to turn in a revised paper."

Cindy raised her eyebrows as she stared at him. "What are you talking about?" she said, incredulous. "After all of that complaining? After all of the work we did? After you _finally _understood everything we were reading about, like, three weeks after a normal person would have?"

"It's not that," Jimmy said, shrugging. "It's just… well, I was almost done with my revisions on Saturday, and I was so sure that I'd finally gotten it down, I'd perfected my arguments, my references, everything. It was an A paper, no question."

He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "But the whole time I was writing… I couldn't stop thinking about you. And I've been knee-deep in all of this courtly love stuff for so long and I'm just starting to understand that _you're _the ideal, or, well, my ideal, anyway, and it's just so damn confusing and frustrating…"

Cindy raised a curious eyebrow at him, and Jimmy sighed. "Look… you're smart," he said. "And you're just… so beautiful, and God knows you're _always _going to distract me no matter what I do, and you went out of your way to help me after I was such a…"

"Complete and total jackass?" Cindy supplied helpfully.

"And while I was revising," Jimmy said pointedly, ignoring her, "I couldn't stop thinking about you. About what you said. How important that paper was to you, how much work you put into it, how much it meant. So I thought… you know." He shrugged. "My ego can take a backseat, just this once. You earned your A. So I figured… you could have it. This time."

He glanced down at Cindy, who was staring at him with wide, rounded eyes.

"But _don't_ get used to it," he said firmly, familiar pride and arrogance threading through his tone. "This is the very definition of an anomaly. Tomorrow I'll be back to my usual enshrined position as—"

Cindy cut him off, surging forward to wrap her arms tightly around his neck, pulling him into a passionate kiss. Jimmy's eyes were opened in confusion at first, not entirely sure what Cindy was doing, but he finally settled his arms around her waist and leaned into her kiss, content to just enjoy it.

"You _idiot_," Cindy said, tears shining in her eyes as she finally pulled away, offering him a watery smile. "That…" She took a deep breath. "…that is the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me. Ever."

Jimmy pulled her close, still not entirely sure what had just happened but intelligent enough to know that whatever it was, it was good. "So, wait," he said carefully, "you're not mad about me missing Valentine's Day? About not getting flowers or chocolate or riding around on a white horse?"

Cindy laughed and kissed his cheek. "Idiot," she said again, affectionately. "Anyone could get me flowers. You taking a lower grade for me? That's… that's just _crazy_."

"Yeah, I can't believe it either," Jimmy shook his head.

"You sure there isn't a gas leak in here somewhere?" Cindy grinned at him, still teary-eyed.

Jimmy smiled at her awkwardly. "I wouldn't bet on it, with this much damage," he said. "But with this… it was important to you. And you…" He averted his gaze, cheeks warming. "You're important to me."

Cindy's fingertips lightly pressed to his cheek, turning him back to meet her gaze, suddenly very close. "Me too," she said, so quietly he could barely hear. He could feel her fingertips trembling against his skin. "Jimmy…" she began hesitantly. "I… I…"

Jimmy's heart clenched in his chest as Cindy closed her eyes and took a deep breath, clearly drawing up her courage.

He knew what she was going to say.

And he had just begun to realize that he wanted her to say it. Wanted it more than he'd ever wanted anything.

But…

Jimmy reached forward and clamped his hand over her mouth, staring down at her with slightly narrowed eyes.

_There's a competitive edge to saying it first_.

"Not so fast, Vortex," he said, raising an eyebrow at her. "I sacrificed an A for you today. An _A_. You don't get to win twice."

Cindy narrowed her eyes and struggled against him, but Jimmy held his hand firmly over her mouth. "Not happening, Vortex," he said. "My turn."

His overconfident tone was directly at odds with the way he felt in that moment, his heart beating fit to burst out of his chest, a slow trickle of sweat between his shoulderblades as he wrapped his free arm around Cindy's waist, dropping his forehead against hers. His throat felt suddenly tight, constricted, the words strangling his vocal chords.

Logic angrily crashed to the front of his brain, wild-eyed and desperate. _Don't you dare do this, Jimmy_, it raged. _It's completely illogical! It makes no sense! You'll never be able to take this back! Say it and you'll never be able to get away from her! _

Jimmy smiled lightly to himself. He didn't need Strange Etherealness to show him the way anymore.

Cindy was still staring up at him, wide-eyed and fearful. _Now or never, Jim. _

"…I love you," he said.

Jimmy had meant it to sound final, victorious, self-assured, with the kind of easy arrogance he'd long since perfected, as though his knees weren't shaking and he wasn't entirely sure he wasn't two seconds away from a heart attack.

Instead, it sounded soft and warm, and as Cindy paled and went limp in his embrace, he decided that maybe it was better that way.

"Are you okay?" he asked, pulling his hand away from her mouth and eyeing her carefully.

Cindy surprised him by laughing, raising her eyes back to his so he could see the shine of her tears. "You idiot," she said, laughing and crying all at once, reaching out to touch his cheek. "You stupid, wonderful idiot. I was just going to say _I think you finally understand it_."

Jimmy blinked at her owlishly, his arm frozen around her waist.

"…oh," he said finally. "Um. …sorry about that." He extricated himself from their embrace and awkwardly made his way to his workbench, rummaging around in his toolbox. "Okay, um, so you just stay over there while I find my short-term memory disruptor…"

He started as Cindy wrapped her arms around his middle and rested her cheek between his shoulderblades. "You're the absolute worst, Neutron," she said, and he felt her smile curving against his skin. "Who said you got to say it first?"

Jimmy felt a hopeful grin beginning to spread across his face. "Well," he began, placing his hands over hers, "technically, you have an A and I don't, so I'd say we're even on this one, Vortex."

He turned in her hold and tugged at her ponytail. "By the way," he said with a smirk, "you're a terrible liar."

"And what did I lie about exactly?"

"_I think you finally understand it_," he repeated, laughing. "You were so going to say it. You just didn't want to give me the satisfaction of saying it before you."

Cindy huffed and halfheartedly attempted to pull away from him. "First of all," she said firmly, "I did no such thing, second, you'll never be able to prove it, and third, good luck getting me to say it _now_."

"I'll take the odds on that," Jimmy laughed, supporting her weight with his good arm, dipping her back and kissing her, twining the fingers of his free hand into her hair.

When he righted her again, Cindy's eyes were unfocused, a dopey smile spreading across her face. "Come on now," Jimmy said. "I didn't drop you, I didn't hit your head on anything, and I didn't set you on fire. That's _got _to be worth you actually saying it."

"I don't think so," Cindy said in a superior tone, raising an eyebrow at him. "You've got to do better than that."

"Look, Cin," he said, taking her hands in his. "In the past few hours, I've lost an A, had my lab all but destroyed, been attacked by a holographic goat, and managed to tell the _extremely stubborn _girl I love that I actually love her and she hasn't said it back. Want to work with me a little? I've had kind of a rough day here."

Cindy grasped his collar firmly in her hand and pulled him down to her, their faces close. "And I haven't?" she challenged. "The boy _I _love stood me up on Valentine's Day _and _managed to say that he loves me before I could say that I love him and he is _absolutely _going to lord that over me for the rest of our lives."

Cindy crossed her arms, the effect of her pointed glare muted somewhat by the fierce blush spreading across her cheeks.

"Well fine then," Jimmy said, mock-glaring back at her. "Like you wouldn't do the same thing."

"Well I _would _have," Cindy pointed out, "if _someone _hadn't cut me off!"

"Maybe you would have preferred if I hadn't said it at all!"

"Maybe I would have!"

"Fine!"

"_Fine!_"

Their noses were pressed together, eyes boring furiously into one another's, before they simultaneously burst into laughter.

"We're one hell of a pair, aren't we, Neutron?" Cindy said, grinning up at him.

Jimmy pulled her into a tight embrace. "Wouldn't have it any other way, Vortex," he said simply.

He leaned down to kiss her, her eyelashes fluttering against his cheek, her hands pressed tightly against his shoulders.

_Oh yeah, I get it_, he thought to himself, smiling slightly against Cindy's lips.

Courtly love was everything love was ostensibly supposed to be. It was soft, refined, chivalrous, restrained, all grace and beauty and elegance.

It was, in essence, everything he and Cindy weren't.

They were fiery where courtly love was gentle, conflicted where it was effortless, argumentative and passionate and tense. They'd never be the type to ride into the sunset astride a beautiful white horse. They weren't roses and chocolates and string quartets.

They were fires, explosions, and an angry goat irritably running into things.

But they loved each other.

And that, really, was all that mattered.

Jimmy broke the kiss gently, still staring down into Cindy's eyes. "So," he said amiably. "How'd I do for my first big romantic gesture?"

Cindy rolled her eyes and smirked at him. "A-minus, Neutron," she said, punching him lightly in the shoulder. "Your new favorite grade."

"Any chance for a revision?" Jimmy asked, leaning close to her.

Cindy smiled, soft and sweet.

"Always," she said, tilting her head to accept his kiss.

**FIN**


End file.
